Google tells Australia its 'Net filters go way too far
This can't be the way that Australia wanted it. One day after Google announced its decision to stop censoring its search results in China, the Australian government released the results of a public consultation on its own Internet censorship proposal. Predictably, Google has some objections (PDF), including its oblique comment that Australia's mandatory filtering scheme could "confer legitimacy upon filtering by other Governments."
"Australia is rightly regarded as a liberal democracy that balances individual liberty with social responsibility," continues the Google filing. "The Governments of many other countries may justify, by reference to Australia, their use of filtering, their lack of disclosure about what is being filtered, and their political direction of agencies administering filtering."
Google is unlikely to come right out and compare Australia to China, but the implication is obvious—and has been made explicit by other groups. Reporters Without Borders said recently that Australia would "be joining an Internet censors' club that includes such countries as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia."
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EU court: Google not liable for AdWord counterfeits
The European Court of Justice has ruled in favor of Google in an AdWords case over the advertising of counterfeits. The court said that the service provider—in this case, Google—could not be held liable for shady retailers buying trademarked keywords in order to sell their faux products, and that the sale of those keywords should be left open to third parties.
Google has been dealing with this case in Europe for at least five years, ever since luxury retailer Louis Vuitton won a lawsuit against AdWords in France. The search giant had allowed retailers selling fake LV wares to buy keywords like "Louis Vuitton replicas" and "Louis Vuitton fakes." The design house alleged that Google didn't have the right to sell the keywords using their brand name, and the court agreed. Google appealed the ruling and took it to Europe's highest court, where it worked its way through the system for nearly two more years before Tuesday's ruling.
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EA's mouthpiece foiled by Command and Conquer DRM
When you have to be connected to the Internet at all times to be able to play a single-player game, something has gone terribly wrong with this industry. EA's first-party blogger and outspoken mouthpiece Jeff Green found this out the hard way, and spread the word. "Booted twice—and progress lost—on my single-player C&C4 game because my DSL connection blinked. DRM fail. We need new solutions," he posted to Twitter.
He then goes on and says that calling it a single-player game may not be fair. "However, C&C4 experiments w/what a "single-player game" is—given it's constantly uploading progress/stats for unlocks. It's complicated... I think if we think of C&C4 as an 'online-only' game—which it basically is—then maybe we'd adjust our expectations accordingly."
Making single-player games effectively online-only is a bad solution to any problem, especially after we've explored how many people live without reliable Internet connections. You could save the points and progress and upload them when there is a connection, as Green points out, or simply design your games assuming players may not always be where there is Internet.
Green sent a warning to prospective players. "The story is fun, the gameplay is interesting and different at least—but if you suffer from shaky/unreliable DSL—you've been warned."
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Hands-on: Ubuntu One music store will rock in Lucid Lynx
Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced the official launch of the Ubuntu One music store. Integrated into the Rhythmbox music player in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release, the store allows users to purchase downloadable songs and albums.
The music store is powered by 7digital, an online music distributor that offers over 4 million songs in the MP3 format without DRM. Canonical partnered with 7digital and developed the software that allows the music store to integrate with Rythmbox and Ubuntu One, the cloud service that Canonical launched last year.
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Nintendo's newest portable announced: the 3DS
With the Nintendo DSi XL landing in the offices of the gaming press this week, Nintendo saw fit to announce its newest product in its portable line: the Nintendo 3DS. The company gave limited details via a press release in Japan; we know the system will use two screens, won't require any sort of special glasses, and will be backwards compatible with current DS and DSi games.
The system will be released before the end of the fiscal year, which means the latest we'll see it in Japan is next March. The system is expected to make an appearance at this year's E3, and we'll surely be given more information before then. For now, Nintendo has yet to release any images of the system, or how games will look, or be played.
So how will the 3D effect be displayed? We posted a video of a downloadable game that's out now in Japan that uses head tracking to simulate a 3D image, and since then we've had time to try the game on a friend's Japanese DSi during GDC. By tracking the motion of the system in relation to your eyes, you seem to be able to peer "into" the picture by turning the system this way and that. It's a surprisingly effective effect, and some iteration of this system may be used in the 3DS.
Nintendo has a history of announcing hardware upgrades and features that may seem silly at first glance before going on to become huge success. Many scoffed at the idea of the Nintendo Wii, until lines to play the system at its first E3 showing stretched around the convention. 3D is fresh in the minds of consumers after the success of Avatar, and 3D-capable televisions are expected to make a splash at retail this year. A portable system that works with all your old games and won't require glasses? It could be the right product at the right time.
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Not at all safe: the Nerf Marauder Longsword
Not too long ago, we took a look at Nerf's new line of foam swords... and we liked what we saw. Nerf has since expanded the line with a new long sword made of firmer material, looking more like it came out of a Zelda title, and with a much longer reach as well as a heavier weight.
You can find the swords between $15 and $20, and if you're a kid at heart I defy you to pick one of these up, feel the heft, and then put it down without walking a set to the cashier. These things are the kind of toys we dreamed about growing up. The one problem? They hurt.
My son received a set of these for Christmas or, as my wife explains, I bought two and allow him to use one. Now that the weather has been warmer we've been taking them down to the park to learn the fine art of father-son sword fighting, and it usually begins civil enough... until someone takes a sword to the knee or face. Then the crying starts, and he waits patiently for me to put myself back together.
Getting hit with one of these things is far from a love tap, and after a few hours of play there's not a mark on them. I'd be afraid of playing with these with any of my more rambunctious adult friends; we had enough problems with things beginning with wooden practice swords in college and then ending in fists.
Great products, just be aware of what you're getting into. This hit harder than the first round of swords, but aren't quite up to the task of home defense. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to hit the toy store, I heard a not rumor Nerf was working on a battle axe...
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Fun when you can play it: Ars reviews Command & Conquer 4
With Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, Electronic Arts has finally concluded the long-running "tiberian saga" plotline for the venerable real-time strategy series. Unfortunately, it's not exactly the best way to go out. C&C4 introduces a number of changes that seem to be aimed at welcoming new players into the fold, but will probably do nothing more than allienate current fans. Throw in some frustratingly restrictive DRM and, well, you're probably better off waiting for Starcraft II.
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Browser ballot already hurting Internet Explorer market share
The first few weeks of the browser ballot, Microsoft's solution to put an end to the EU antirust case, has already resulted in Redmond's browser losing market share to its rivals, according to web stats firm StatCounter.
In France, IE usage has dropped by 2.5 percent, Italy by 1.3 percent, and the UK by 1 percent. Browser developers Opera and Mozilla have reported strong growth within Europe, with Opera claiming that downloads have doubled since the ballot was introduced, and a Mozilla spokesperson claiming, "We have seen significant growth in the number of new Firefox users as a result of the Ballot Choice screen :As the ballot is rolled out across the rest of Europe, Mozilla expects further gains to be made.
The ballot isn't universally popular. Although 12 browsers are offered, only the top five are immediately accessible. The remaining seven are only visible after scrolling horizontally. As the seven minority browsers expected, their presence in the ballot has done little to boost their market share. A spokesman for the Flock browser said, "To date, new downloads of Flock originating from the browser choice screen have only contributed marginally to growth in overall downloads. This is also the case for the other browsers not on the main screen."
The remaining browsers have petitioned the EU to try to get the ballot changed. For its part, Microsoft still maintains that the browser ballot is compliant with the EU's demands. With some 200 million European users due to be shown the choice screen, and the benefits of being included becoming increasingly clear, time is clearly of the essence for the seven smaller browsers.
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feature: Cheap shots: How to shoot pro-quality video on a budget
So you’ve shot a few home movies, and maybe even some scripted ones, on your HD handy-cam. But when you play the footage back on your computer or television it sounds and looks bad. Even if it turns out all right, there is still something that makes it look cheap and amateurish.
The biggest telltale sign of amateur work is audio quality. Even if the footage looks relatively sharp and clear with good color depth, bad audio will cheapen the whole experience. Crystal clear audio screams “professional.”
The second telltale sign of amateur work is image quality. This tends to be a symptom of the videographer not understanding lighting science. The subject may be too dark against a bright background, or the footage has an unwanted color tint. A well-trained videographer can shoot amazing footage on the cheapest of handy-cams; making it look like it was shot on a professional camera.
If you just want to shoot home videos of family and friends, then I recommend you stick to what you are already doing, but if you want to shoot videos that look and sound professional, be ready to invest around $500 on some extra equipment.
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How we'll get a gigabit to US hospitals, libraries, colleges
One key recommendation in the National Broadband Plan was that the government support a scheme to wire hundreds of thousands of "anchor institutions" with 1Gbps fiber. The move would mean that schools, libraries, colleges, and community centers in every town in the country could eventually have a fat pipe and a future-proof fiber connection.
Not only that: both the FCC and the plan's backers envision the system being used to push faster broadband out into the surrounding community. The only question is how to pay for it all.
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Panasonic is winning the first round of the 3DTV wars
3D TVs dominated the show floor at CES 2010, and I spent a good deal of time trying out all of the models and approaches on offer from vendors large and small. My conclusion was that Panasonic's plasma-based approach was noticeably superior to the competition, so I wasn't surprised to learn that consumers seem to agree.
Bloomberg reports that Panasonic 3D TVs have already sold out at Best Buy, despite having launched as recently as March 10. In fact, there's reportedly a shortage of the TVs, and they're on backorder.
I honestly didn't expect consumers to snap up even the best 3D TVs, since I didn't find the experience to be compelling enough to pay a premium for. I'll admit that Avatar in 3D changed my mind, and I found myself thinking that when it comes time for me to replace my current plasma TV in a few years, I'll definitely pick up a 3D-capable model.
It looks like the 3D TV revolution will definitely happen, but unless the makers of LED-backed LCD models can find a way to boost the quality of their 3D experience, only one company stands to benefit from the change so far.
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Multicore requires OS rewrites? Well, maybe
A Microsoft kernel engineer, Dave Probert, gave a presentation last week outlining his thoughts on how the Windows kernel should evolve to meet the needs of the multicore future ahead of us. Probert complained that current operating systems fail to capitalize on the capabilities of multicore processors and leave users waiting. "Why should you ever, with all this parallel hardware, ever be waiting for your computer?" he asked.
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BitDefender update breaks 64-bit Windows PCs
An update pushed out on Saturday for the BitDefender anti-virus software will break 64-bit installations of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The update results in false positive detection of both Windows system files and parts of BitDefender itself. Hundreds of users have been left with non-booting systems as a result.
A new signature update has been published that resolves the problem; anyone still using the signatures from Saturday, March 20 should disable the virus scanning module until the new signatures are installed. For affected users, however, the situation is grim; every file on the system will end up being quarantined, leaving machines unable to boot. To fix affected machines, the preferred solution is to download BitDefender's rescue CD and move the files out of quarantine. If this doesn't work, there are further instructions for BitDefender 2009 and BitDefender 2010 users that should solve the problem. BitDefender 2008, however, has no solution available yet.
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Amazon, Barnes & Noble plan to ride the iPad e-book train
Apple has already built an iBookstore on top of its successful iTunes Store platform and will have five of the six major publishing companies ready to sell e-books to iPad users on April 3. Still, Amazon and Barnes & Noble both plan to have dedicated iPad apps ready to access their own library of e-books as well.
Amazon gave us a teaser about its plans to launch an iPad app when it rolled out its Kindle software for Mac last week. According to a New York Times story about iPad developers getting ready for launch day, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble believe that the iPad will give a boost to the e-book market overall, despite Apple's own competing e-book store.
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Apple (finally) lets you give iPhone apps as gifts
Apple gave us a nice Monday surprise as it added the ability to buy an app for a friend or acquaintance as a gift via the App Store. The feature has long been available for music and movies, but until today had been mysteriously absent from the App Store since its launch almost two years ago.
If you have tried to download an iPhone or iPod touch app from the App Store after about noon (CDT) today, you will have likely be confronted with a requirement to read and agree to new App Store terms of service, which is how we were alerted to the change. It took some time for the update to propagate in the App Store system, but the drop down menu next to the price of every app offers the option to "Gift This App" in addition to "Add To Wishlist" or "Share via Facebook." We confirmed with Apple that the functionality is available store-wide, and an Apple spokesperson told Ars that she thinks the feature is "pretty cool."
There are some limitations to this, however. Gifts can only apply to the purchase price of the app—it won't work for in-app purchases or subscriptions, or for buying updates to iPhone OS for the iPod touch. Also, you cannot use gift card credit to buy a gift for someone else. Finally, gifts are strictly non-refundable.
The feature is really great, though, for users who want to give a specific app to a friend instead of a generic gift card. It's also great for developers or publishers who want to give review copies or giveaways without using up their limited promo codes.
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Google sends China users to Hong Kong for uncensored results
Google has officially stopped censoring search results in China, but in a somewhat roundabout way. Google.cn no longer works as a search portal—instead, visitors are being directed to Google's service based out of Hong Kong, where taboo topics are not regulated by the Chinese government.
Google's page reads (translated) "Welcome to Google Search in China's new home." It seems pretty clear that Google is happy with shutting down its China-based domain in favor of Hong Kong. It's also highly likely that Chinese officials will scramble to block uncensored results from Google.com.hk via its Great Firewall. Google says that it's currently monitoring "access issues," and that it has set up an App Status Dashboard to show what's currently accessible in mainland China and what's not.
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Adobe to unify ColdFusion, Flex, Flash with Flash Builder 4
Adobe announced Monday that it has updated and changed the name of its Flex Builder IDE. Now called Flash Builder 4, it incorporates support for the now open source Flex 4 framework, as well as integrating an IDE for ColdFusion development.
"We changed the name because the new Builder product encompasses more than just the Flex framework," group product manager for the Flash Platform Dave Gruber told Infoworld.
Flash Builder 4 includes support for Adobe's still beta Flash Catalyst rapid UI design tool, which, along with Flex 4, will enable designers to work on the front-end independently of back-end development. It also allows connecting to a number of back-end environments, including PHP, Java, Adobe's LiveCycle, as well as the aforementioned ColdFusion. Support for accessing REST and SOAP-based Web services—a must in today's cloud-based environments—is also included.
The new Eclipse-based ColdFusion Builder IDE is something that Adobe says developers have been asking for for some time. These developers have been stuck using Dreamweaver or other open source tools, neither of which were considered ideal.
Adobe has also announced the Flash Platform Social Service, which enables developers to easily connect their Flash-based applications to popular social networks without having to write specific integration code. The service includes an API that can be used in Flash and Flex applications that abstracts each social network's individual APIs, as well as "plug and play widgets" for common functionality and site-specific analytics tools.
The real payoff of all this integration is expected to come when Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 are ubiquitously available on every desktop and most mobile platforms. Then applications can be developed for the Web, desktop, and/or mobile using Flash, Flex, and related tools. Whether that payoff will actually happen has yet to be determined.
Flash Builder 4 is available in a standard edition for $249. A premium version is also available; it includes a suite of testing tools and ColdFusion Builder, for $699. ColdFusion Builder is also available itself for $299.
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It's the return of Bizarro Lounge! (Help us stress test)
It's a tradition at Ars to open up the Lounge every once and a while and just tell people to go nuts: fight about politics, post stupid cat pictures, rag on how overrated Lady Gaga is. So here we go again! As you may recall, we recently changed our commenting back-end. The platform it's on has worked great, and we are thinking about developing some new community services using that platform. But we need to figure out if it can take a real beating, and we're also trying to see how customizable the software truly is. We'd like to work out any kinks before we start adding new features, so just browsing around and making some posts would help us a ton. Plus, you get to goof off!
We've set up a test area here. There's a technical support forum if you want to report bugs or ideas, and there's a general thread for discussing feedback on the experience of this platform. The general guidelines for what passes as acceptable behavior in Bizarro Lounge are pretty simple: keep it safe for work, no porn or warez, no viscous personal attacks, and no discussion of Lady Gaga unless it's about her pathetic lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend or her strange desire to cover up her lack of talent with terrible fashion. In other words, don't debase yourself.
Kurt, Aurich, Greg and Clint will be deploying new code, CSS, and graphics constantly throughout the day, so please don't be surprised if the experience changes while you're using it. And if you find something annoying, be sure to point it out. In many cases we can fix things relatively speedily.
Finally, if you have any feedback that you'd prefer not to post publicly for whatever reason, shoot us an email at civis@arstechnica.com or use our anonymous contact form.
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Small scale, energy-efficient desalination demoed
Right now, estimates are that a few hundred million people suffer from limited access to fresh water, and population growth and climate change are expected to rapidly exacerbate that problem. Many of these people have access to brackish or salty water, but desalinization plants only work efficiently on the large scale, with an attendant infrastructure. A paper released by Nature Nanotechnology on Sunday describes a microfluidic approach to desalinization that is roughly as energy-efficient as a large-scale plant, but compact enough that it could operate as a small, battery-powered device.
The basic idea behind the device is extremely simple: send a flow of salty water down a channel with a Y-shaped junction, and convince all the charged items, whether they're salt ions or cells, to take the left turn. That leaves a flow of relatively pure water running down the right fork.
Convincing everything to make a left turn requires a technique termed ion concentration polarization. The right-hand fork of the device has a small channel covered with a membrane called Nafion that only admits small, positively charged ions (called cations). There's also a voltage difference across that channel that repels the cations. Instead of backing everything up right at the Nafion membrane, this setup actively repels all charged particles. Placing it at the mouth of the right-hand channel neatly forces all the charged materials to the far-left-hand wall of the device, where it will be carried down the left turn of the device. The water that flows down the right-hand side will be free of charged materials—meaning salt-free.
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Doing science: Jonathan Coulton to create music for Portal 2
Portal was something of a perfect storm. Game mechanics that felt new, a story that tied into the world of Half-Life, a length that didn't outstay its own welcome, and to really drive the point home the end credits featured the instantly memorable song "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton. The song and the game built on the success of one another, creating one of the most memorable moments in modern gaming.
In a phone interview last Thursday, I brought up "Still Alive" and asked Coulton whether he'd be interested in doing a follow-up. "I will be doing music for Portal 2 as well, yeah. You know, I think Valve and I were both really happy with how 'Still Alive' turned out, and it was an overwhelmingly popular response to something we thought was maybe gonna be a bit weird and unusual," he explained.
"We weren't sure how it was gonna go. And so it's gonna be hard to live up to that success, and it was sort of a surprise to everyone, us included, so ... I don't know, we'll see. The sequel is always a troublesome thing, and sequels are rarely better than the original. Empire Strikes Back is the only exception that I can think of."
With such a high bar set by his first entry into the world of video game music, anything else is going to have to be incredible to live up to the promise of the first Portal release. Still, new Coulton is a good thing, and it's great to hear that he'll be back in the sequel.
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60% of Americans engaging in couch potato multitasking
Many of us just spent several hours on Sunday night watching the healthcare bill debate on CSPAN while simultaneously chatting, making forum posts, or Tweeting about it. We may be used to it, but that behavior is no longer reserved for us nerds. According to the latest Three Screen report (PDF) out of Nielsen, Americans in general now spend 35 percent more time using the Internet and TV at the same time than a year prior.
That translates to about 3.5 hours of overlapping TV/Internet time per month for the average American consumer, according to Nielsen's data from the fourth quarter of 2009. Nearly 59 percent of consumers reported doing this at least once a month as well, up from 57.5 percent in 2008. That's a lot of people spreading their attention across multiple screens, which is why so many shows are beginning to advertise live online polls, chats, and more during the course of broadcast. People aren't just hitting up those websites after the show is over—they're hitting them up as the show is going on.
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Get an iPad for your old CDs thanks to iPodMeister
Here's a thought: if you hadn't wasted so much money on bad CDs in the 90s, you could buy an iPad today. It burns, doesn't it? Fortunately for those of us with now-useless and potentially embarrassing CDs, the New York Times has pointed out that iPodMeister has a solution: the company that has long taken CDs in trade for new iPods will now have iPads for barter as well.
It might sound like the company is out to steal your collection, but according to iPodMeister's site, the business model is successful because CDs can still fetch high prices overseas in areas where MP3 players haven't yet penetrated the market. The system is simple enough: send them a couple hundred CDs and iPodMeister sends you back the iPod or iPad model of your choice. The offerings range from an 8GB iPod nano for 220 CDs, to the baseline 16GB iPad for 600 CDs, up to the 64GB iPad for 1,150 CDs.
This appears ideal for music buffs, but the standards for viable CDs are set pretty high: iPodMeister will only accept CDs in their jewel cases with all the original cover art (i.e., sending them your Case Logic binder full of discs will get you nothing in return). Burned discs and promo discs, like ones you got for free from stores with another purchase, don't count. iPodMeister also has final say on whether a disc is eligible, and if it isn't, you won't get it back.
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