IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 01/04/2010

Thursday, April 1, 2010

IT News HeadLines (Ars Technica) 01/04/2010

Record industry: ignore that French piracy study!

A few days back, we highlighted a new study out of France that found piracy actually going up after the country passed a strict Internet disconnection law. Though the law won't be implemented until later in the year, les internautes are already moving away from P2P networks; the thing is, even more of them are moving to other forms of piracy not dealt with by the new law, like online streaming and one-click downloads.

The recording industry's international trade group, IFPI, didn't think much of this research from the University of Rennes. IFPI CEO John Kennedy blasted the study: "It is nonsense to suggest that a study conducted before the [new] HADOPI authority has sent a letter to a single infringing user is somehow a definitive judgment on the success or otherwise of France's digital piracy laws."

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Why Portland should get Google fiber (hint: Linus Torvalds)

The City of Portland, Oregon says it's ready to be one of Google's test run fiber-to-the-home projects, and how:

"No city in the USA is as ready as Portland to launch a citywide or scaled test bed for ultra high speed open platform broadband," its response to Google's Request for Proposals proudly declares. "Portland has the history, broad community support, willing businesses, committed local government, and cost-effective, year-round construction metrics."

As we've reported, Google says it's planning to roll out and test "ultra-high speed broadband networks" in various trial areas around the United States. And they sound pretty darned ultra: one gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections "at a competitive price" to cities and regions of 50,000 to ten times that many people.

Portland says if you build it, we will download. But beyond that, why should Google choose that rainy northwestern city where people prefer to rust rather than tan? Here are some answers the RFP gives.

First, hardcore telecommuters, Portlanders like to work at home, or "over Wi-Fi in coffee shops, or in co-working spaces," the RFP notes. In fact, "nine Portlanders telecommute for every one who commutes by light rail." Plus it's a small business city—within Multnomah County, three out of four businesses have ten employees or less.

Next, Portlanders are huge long-term planners of the green variety. This was the first city to embrace a plan for global warming, the document adds. Its emissions levels have dropped 14 percent while national emissions continue to go up. The town already serves as a test site for sensor nets, telemedicine, and advanced geolocation services.

And Portland "was the first government in the nation to endorse 'open access' requirement to then-emerging broadband Internet platforms," doing so back in December of 1998. Google's project, it should be noted, will be open access—letting users choose from a variety of ISPs.

Finally, Mr. Linux himself, Linus Torvalds, lives in Portland, as does wiki inventor Ward Cunningham.

This all sounds pretty competitive to us (we, of course, aren't making the decision). Applicants had until March 26 to make their move; as cities now reveal their applications, everyone else can see what they are up against. Google may take until the end of this year to make its decision.

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Google bakes Flash into Chrome, hopes to improve plug-in API

Google announced Tuesday that its Chrome Web browser will integrate Adobe's Flash plug-in. The latest version of Flash will ship with Google's Web browser, obviating the need for end users to download and install it separately. Google will also start regularly deploying new versions of Flash through Chrome's update system in order to ensure that users always have the latest version.

Google has also revealed that it will be working closely with Adobe, Mozilla, and other players in the Web ecosystem to improve the API that browsers use to support plugins. Such improvements could potentially help ameliorate some of the technical deficiencies that have plagued Flash and other plugins.

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Bats use the sun to orient flights through the dark

Dracula may not have been able to tolerate sunlight, but some nocturnal bat species may actually rely the sun for navigation. A study this week in PNAS shows that the greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) calibrates its internal geomagnetic compass using cues from the setting sun.

At sunset, the researchers exposed bats to a magnetic field rotated 90Â° east from its normal orientation. The bats, which were displaced from their home range and released in a completely new setting, flew in a direction 77.6Â° counterclockwise from the actual direction of their roost. Control bats, which had been exposed to a normal geomagnetic field, flew directly toward home.

In the second phase of the study, another experimental group of bats was exposed to a similarly-skewed geomagnetic field, but only after the glow from the setting sun had disappeared. In this treatment, both experimental and control bats flew directly toward their roosts. Taken together, these two experiments show that the timing of the calibration is vital, and the bats must be taking some cue from the setting sun.

Greater mouse-eared bats are nocturnal and generally emerge from their roosts after the sun sinks below the horizon, but before the residual light in the sky disappears. Their nocturnal strategy makes it rather surprising that the sun—rather than the stars, as previously thought—calibrates their navigational systems. The next step in the scientists' research plan: to figure out what aspect of the sunset the bats are using as a cue.

PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0912477107 (About DOIs).

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Checking in from PAX East: new location, same love

Journalists, developers, and other professionals working in and around the gaming industry all have their own conferences and events throughout the year. Part of what makes the Penny Arcade Expo so special is the way it pulls back the magical curtain—at least for a few days—to let members of the gaming public have a taste of this action for themselves.

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90 percent of Windows 7 flaws fixed by removing admin rights

After tabulating all the vulnerabilities published in Microsoft's 2009 Security Bulletins, it turns out 90 percent of the vulnerabilities can be mitigated by configuring users to operate without administrator rights, according to a report by BeyondTrust. As for the published Windows 7 vulnerabilities through March 2010, 57 percent are no longer applicable after removing administrator rights. By comparison, Windows 2000 is at 53 percent, Windows XP is at 62 percent, Windows Server 2003 is at 55 percent, Windows Vista is at 54 percent, and Windows Server 2008 is at 53 percent. The two biggest exploited Microsoft applications also fare well: 100 percent of Microsoft Office flaws and 94 percent of Internet Explorer flaws (and 100 percent of IE8 flaws) no longer work.

This is good news for IT departments because it means they can significantly reduce the risk of a security breach by configuring the operating system for standard users rather than an administrator. Despite unpredictable and evolving attacks, companies can very easily protect themselves or at least reduce the effects of a newly discovered threat, as long as they're OK with their users not installing software or using many applications that require elevated privileges.

In total, 64 percent of all Microsoft vulnerabilities reported last year are mitigated by removing administrator rights. That number increases to 81 percent if you only consider security issues marked Critical, the highest rating Redmond gives out, and goes even higher to 87 percent if you look at just Remote Code Execution flaws. Microsoft published 74 Security Bulletins in 2009, spanning around 160 vulnerabilities (133 of those were for Microsoft operating systems). The report, linked below, has a list of all of them, which software they affect, and which ones are mitigated by removing admin rights.

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Solar flare activity doesn't account for recent warming

There is a phrase that I hate: "Lies, damn lies, and statistics," which is generally used to disparage anyone presenting any data that they find not to their taste. Classic examples of this turn up in response to epidemiological studies that show that vaccines and autism are not linked, and, of course, that the anthropogenic global warming is, indeed, anthropogenic.

That said, it doesn't stop people from misusing statistics, but—and this is an important point—this misuse can be most effectively countered with the correct use of statistics. A classic example of this has just turned up in Physical Review Letters, where a seeming link between short-term solar activity and longer-term temperature trends was shown to be the result of poor analysis.

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Self-published authors to get in iBookstore via Smashwords

Apple initially named five of the top six major publishers as launch partners for its iBookstore for the iPad. More recently, we heard that two independent publishers had signed deals to provide e-books and that Apple plans to offer free public domain titles from Project Gutenberg. Now, self-published authors will also get a crack at the iBookstore via deals Apple has struck with e-book publishing services Smashwords and Lulu.

Smashwords and Lulu are for e-books what TuneCore is for music. TuneCore will take your CD (or indie film) and upload it to the iTunes Store for a flat fee, eliminating the need to jump through all the hoops necessary to set up an account directly with Apple. All the royalties earned on sales of the album and individual tracks are then forwarded to the artist.

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feature: Fiber-to-the-X: the economics of last-mile fiber

Lately the word "fiber" has started to become ubiquitous in advertisements for broadband. It’s a synonym for the future, for speed and quality. Everybody tries to connect that synonym to their brand, regardless of their actual network design. In the trade press, acronyms like FttX (which stands for Fiber-to-the-X, where X is your favorite letter or word) are used as if all last mile network architectures with optical fiber are more or less equal.

But they're not. Let’s take a look under the hood and analyze the reasons why fiber is chosen as a medium, then look at the topologies, the architectures, the trade-offs, and the inherent path dependencies of a particular deployment method. Fiber-to-the-curb, fiber-to-the-basement, fiber-to-the-home—truly, not all fiber is created equal.

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More on next-gen iPhone and Verizon iPhone dreams

Apple plans to release new iPhone hardware this summer—this is widely accepted among the Apple community despite the lack of any announcement from Apple. But more rumored details about the hardware and its expected launch date supports Steve Jobs' promise that it will be an "A+ update." This new hardware will supposedly launch on AT&T in the US, but yesterday we heard from the Wall Street Journal that a CDMA-based version was destined for Verizon sometime this year. Several analysts are less certain than WSJ's sources, but Apple may be ready to make the CDMA leap to stave heated competition from Android.

After WSJ's story mentioned the obvious—that a new iPhone was coming this summer—Daring Fireball posted a number of expected features of the upcoming iPhone refresh. The device will likely be powered by a version (perhaps the exact same one) of the A4 processor inside the iPad. It may also have a 960 x 640 pixel display, a front facing camera, and iPhone OS 4.0 is expected to enable some form of third-party multitasking.

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Linkin Park's iPhone game brings camp, chiptunes

Bands getting into the world of gaming is nothing new in the time of rhythm games, but the trailer for the upcoming iPhone game centering around Linkin Park is delightfully screwball, and it seems to realize just how silly the whole thing looks. Even the name, LINKIN PARK 8-BIT REBELLION! is campy. You'll work with the band to keep the world safe for 8-bit games, fighting off the powers of Pixxelkorp and their evil high-definition ways.

The game features a good amount of songs by Linkin Park, and by beating the game you'll unlock a new track to listen to. Whether or not that's exciting depends on whether you're a fan of the band—I've seen them live twice and bought the T-shirt—but the overall look and feel of the game is nicely screwball. Take a look at the trailer.

It's hard not to smile at the fact that the hooks, and sometimes entire songs, have been translated to eight-bit versions to make things sound like a classic game. With songs, artwork, social networking, and what looks to be at least a somewhat fun side-scrolling action game, this could be a fun little experience for fans of the band; let's hope we see more people take their image a little less seriously.

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The software brains behind the particle colliders

The LHC today began running 7TeV collisions for the first time. In the instant that its detectors register the events associated with a collision, the challenges move from the hardware realm into software, as the LHC will literally produce more data than we can possibly handle. We have to figure out what to hang on to in real time, and send it around the globe via dedicated connections that aggregate multiple 10Gbp/s links; those on the receiving end need to safely store it and pursue the sorts of analyses that will hopefully reveal some new physics. In our final installment, we'll take a brief look at the computational issues created by the LHC.

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Fatty foods can be addictive like crack—at least for rats

Obesity may be a result of a reduced sensitivity to the "rewards" of calorically dense food, fostered by eating too much of the stuff too often, according study published in Nature Neuroscience this week. A group of researchers gave some rats different levels of access to tasty and highly caloric "cafeteria" foods, while training them to respond to aversive stimuli. Rats who had been given the most access to the good stuff ignored any indications of negative consequences and kept right on eating.

During the experiment, researchers used three groups of rats: one given only rat chow, a second given chow and access to highly caloric food for an hour a day, and a third group allowed their choice of chow or the caloric food for 18-23 hours a day. The fatty foods included things like bacon, sausage, cake, and chocolate.

Once the rats had gained some weight, researchers began presenting the sausage links and cake slices to each group while flashing a light and shocking the feet of all the rats. The expectation was that this would link the negative stimulus and the caloric foods in the rats' brains.

Researchers found that, when they flashed the cue light without the shock, the chow-only and restricted access rats would back off the goodies; the extended-access rats were unfazed and continued to gobble their cakes. Obviously, full access to fatty foods causes negative consequences to pale in comparison to the need to keep eating. But the results also suggest that extended access to tasty, highly-caloric foods blunt sensitivity to the "reward" of eating them.

Researchers compare this study to one where rats were given extended access to intravenous cocaine or heroin, which caused a similarly warped reward sensitivity. Rats in the same experiment that were drug-free or had limited access were also able to keep negative stimuli in perspective, which indicates that there are striking similarities between drug- and caloric food-related behaviors.

Nature Neuroscience, 2010. DOI: doi:10.1038/nn.2519 (About DOIs).

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Bringing US privacy law into the cloud computing era

The government needs a search warrant to bust into your house, search your files, and pull out any incriminating documents. It needs the same warrant for files stored on your computer. So why doesn't the same standard apply when the same information is stored in online servers operated by third parties like Google or Microsoft?

The answer is 1986's Electronic Communications Privacy Act, drafted in a different era. Many of its distinctions no longer make sense today, such as the one between "private" and "third party" records. The government has found numerous ways to access material stored in remote servers—notably e-mail—without the traditional warrant and judicial oversight required in the past. And new sources of data, such as cell phone location records, weren't even envisioned by the earlier law.

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Gene patents may not survive breast cancer test ruling

Yesterday, a judge in New York issued a sweeping decision that, if upheld following a seemingly inevitable appeal, may put most gene patents on shaky ground. The ACLU, various researchers, and medical advocacy groups had sued Myriad genetics and the University of Utah, which held patents that covered tests for mutations in the BRCA genes, which predispose their carriers to breast and ovarian cancers (the US Patent and Trademark Office was also sued, for good measure). Just about everyone involved requested summary judgement, and the ruling grants it in favor of the plaintiffs, invalidating Myriad's patents in the process.

Summary judgment requires that there be little dispute over the basic facts of the matter. And, not surprisingly, all of the parties agree on the history of modern genetics, which the decision recites, starting with Mendel and moving through Watson and Crick to the biotechnology era.

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Shatter comes to the PC, costs $10 you need to spend

Shatter is already well-known on the PlayStation 3 for both its gameplay and award-winning music, and the game has been released to Steam for the very reasonable price of $10. The game had fallen through the fingers of our coverage, however, so it was exciting to finally get a chance to try the game when Sidhe sent over a review code. We found out very quickly this game has buzz for a reason.

Shatter takes the basic concept of the Arkanoid clone and adds a few extra layers. The game is sometimes played vertically, sometimes played horizontally, and sometimes even played on circular levels. You knock the ball into the bricks for high scores, collect the various power-ups, and once a level is clear you move on to the next one.

Like certain mechanized domestic servants from satirical science-fiction films however, your ship can both suck and blow. You can pull the ball towards you by holding one mouse button, or push it away from you with the other. You may not even have to hit the ball to send it careening back at the bricks, and this mechanic also lets you aim the ball with some precision as you practice the game's mechanics. It gives you an extra level of control of what's going on, and allows you to become more proactive in your own fate.

The game also features co-op play as well as some amazing boss battles, and yes, the music really is that good. This is one of the rare games that starts with a well-known concept, adds a nice twist, and then has the confidence to pull everything off with grace. It feels fresh, and is good for a quick game or some serious hours. Highly recommended.

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SCO loses again: jury says Novell owns UNIX SVRX copyrights

The SCO Group was dealt a serious, potentially fatal blow today in its courtroom battle against Linux. The jury in the trial between SCO and Novell has issued a verdict affirming that Novell is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This verdict will make it difficult for SCO to continue pursuing its baseless assault on the open source operating system.

The SCO saga began in 2003 when the company claimed that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. SCO filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging that Big Blue misappropriated UNIX code and included it in the Linux kernel. Although SCO repeatedly claimed to have compelling evidence to support its accusations, the company has yet to provide proof in the seven years since. Internal SCO memos that came to light during the discovery process of SCO's conflict with IBM revealed that SCO's own internal code audits did not identify any evidence infringement.

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Usenet curator Newzbin hammered by UK court for infringement

Newzbin, a major indexer of Usenet newsgroup binaries, has been hammered by a UK judge. Though the site claimed to be nothing more than a "Google for Usenet" that indexed all sorts of useful material, the judge found that site operators knew about copyright infringement, did nothing to stop it, and in fact designed a site meant to encourage it.

Newzbin made it simple for Usenet users to access binary files. Without the service, it could be tedious to collect and decode the many parts of a video file, for instance; even finding them was difficult, since Usenet lacks good search features. Newzbin did the hard work of sorting through Usenet uploads, collecting the useful information, and packaging it into a tiny NZB file. Newsreaders that could handle such files would then be able to grab every part of a movie at once and reassemble it with minimal effort.

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BBC puts hold on iPhone plans thanks to competition concerns

The BBC has decided to hold off on its iPhone app plans thanks to concerns from the newspaper industry. The organization announced Tuesday that the BBC Trust had asked it to postpone the apps that were originally slated for release in April so that it could consider "representations from industry."

As noted by the BBC, the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) has voiced serious concerns over the BBC's plans, saying the apps could "damage the nascent market" for news applications. Part of the reason the NPA is concerned is because the BBC is taxpayer-funded—this would allow the BBC to distribute its applications for free while other news organizations might have to incur further costs to do so, giving the BBC an unfair advantage. The apps were only meant to repackage existing BBC content into a more iPhone-friendly format, though, so it's hard to see how it would change the landscape in any appreciable way when users could get that same content by firing up Mobile Safari.

The postponement won't just affect the iPhone, either. The BBC had originally planned to release apps for BlackBerry and Android as well, showcased during this year's Mobile World Conference. Both of those will also be put off while the organization reconsiders whether the apps would be considered an entirely new offering or just another part of the BBC.

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Cable ISPs: new broadband test makes our service look slow

A new study charges that some of the Internet Service Provider speed test results that the Federal Communications Commission cites in its surveys are inaccurate. Specifically, tests conducted by the comScore market research group tend to give wrongly calculated lowball marks on ISP performance, says Netforecast—its work commissioned by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

comScore's various testing errors "result in an underreporting of the actual speed delivered by an ISP on its network, and the individual errors create a compounding effect when aggregated in an individual subscriber's speed measurement," Netforecast concludes. "The result is that the actual speed delivered by each ISP tested is higher than the comScore reported speed for each result of every test."

Not only that, but "other broadband user speed tests are also prone to the same data gathering errors," Netforecast warns.

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Microsoft details Zune 4.5, still mute on 64GB Zune HD

Microsoft is planning to release the free Zune 4.5 firmware update sometime in the next few weeks. The company confirmed four new features the update will include: Smart DJ on Zune HD, Picks on Zune HD, music browsing and streaming from Zune Marketplace on your TV, and expanded video codec support.

The Zune software currently has two music recommendation features: Picks and Smart DJ (added last fall). As expected, both are coming to the Zune HD device as well. Users will be able to choose a song or artist from their collection or from the Zune Marketplace catalog and then hit the Smart DJ icon to build a new mix based on their selection. If you have a Zune Pass subscription, music will be pulled from the Zune Marketplace catalog as well as your collection. For Picks, the algorithm analyzes what you listen to and compares that to millions of other Zune users to make personalized recommendations. These automatic recommendations will available directly on the Zune HD device as well as the Zune software.

Currently, owners of the Zune HD A/V dock can connect their Zune HD to their TV and play back their videos and music on the big screen. With this software update, they'll also be able to browse and stream music from Zune Marketplace directly. Features will include browsing New Releases and recommendations from the Picks page, searching for a specific song or artist, as well as creating a new Smart DJ playlist on TV.

The Zune HD is getting support for MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP), which includes Xvid and AVI support, meaning no transcoding required. This was a major complaint from Zune HD users, so it's great to see it fixed now. Another one was lack of space: 32GB just doesn't cut it sometimes. While rumors of the 64GB have started up again due to a slip up on the Zune webpage, Redmond does not yet want to confirm it. "We haven't made any announcements around additional Zune HD capacities," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. We would not be surprised if we saw a 64GB model when the new firmware is released.

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As expected, China clamps down on uncensored Google search

A week after Google started redirecting Chinese search users to its Hong Kong site in order to avoid having to censor results, many search queries from within China are getting the Great Firewall treatment. The move was widely expected by most, and with Google's mobile services also getting a partial block in China, it's clear the government isn't a fan of Google's shenanigans when it comes to deciding what its citizens can access.

Chinese Internet users began noting that even the most benign of phrases were being blocked from Google.com.hk starting Tuesday morning (or Tuesday afternoon in China), as noted by the Wall Street Journal. This includes searches for words like "happy," in addition to your usual forbidden topics like porn and info about Tiananmen Square protests. As usual, the Chinese government hasn't made any official announcement about the blocks, so users are unsure as to whether they will be permanent or not.

Google's Mobile site, which normally offers access to things like search, images, Gmail, and more, has also been spotty in recent days, according to numerous reports online. Google's service availability page shows that YouTube and Blogger were outright inaccessible as of March 29 while Docs, Picasa, Groups, and Mobile were under a "partial block." The status for Web search still indicates no issues, though that's obviously not the case anymore.

Though the blocks are hardly surprising, many find them to be indicative that China's government is indeed more interested in maintaining control over the Internet for political purposes than allowing citizens to freely access information.

"It's terrible! I want to go out to the street and protest immediately! This will make many people angry," an unnamed photographer in Beijing told the WSJ. "This is a huge setback for China. To be excluded from mainstream society in the outside world makes me...despair for China's future."

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