By some measures, older really is wiser
Most adages aren’t backed up by scientific research. However, a new study in PNAS this week lends support to the saying "With age comes wisdom." Even though other cognitive processes degenerate during one's golden years, the authors found that old age is associated with significant gains in social conflict reasoning.
In accordance with other psychological studies, the researchers defined "wisdom" as knowledge that is useful for navigating social challenges and dealing with life problems. They assessed six commonly cited dimensions of wisdom, including perspective-shifting, recognition of uncertainty, and willingness to search for a compromise.
The subjects, who varied from 25 to 90 years old, first took several cognitive tests to assess various measures of their intelligence. They then read newspaper stories about either intergroup conflicts (such as the ethnic clash between the Issa and the Afari in Djibouti), or "Dear Abby" letters about interpersonal conflicts (such as a husband and wife's marital problems). Each participant was interviewed about what they had read, and their answers were rated on each dimension of wisdom by coders who were blinded to their age.
For each type of conflict, elderly participants outscored both young and middle-aged participants in nearly every wisdom dimension. The greatest gains in wisdom were between middle age and old age, even though fluid intelligence, or the ability to reason abstractly, tends to drop during that period. The researchers found that these positive effects of age on wisdom are significant across all social classes, education levels, and IQs.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1001715107 (About DOIs).
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Microsoft: Office 15—not 2010—to be fully OOXML compliant
Alex Brown, the convener of ISO's OOXML subcommittee (SC34), criticized Microsoft last week for failing to properly support the standard in Office 2010. Brown declared that Microsoft's office format was "heading for failure" due to the growing number of unresolved technical deficiencies and Microsoft's own apparent lack of interest in implementing ISO's revised version of the standard.
Microsoft technical evangelist Doug Mahugh responded on Wednesday in an effort to clarify Microsoft's intentions for OOXML support. He said that Microsoft is strongly committed to the standard and plans to achieve full compliance with the ISO-approved specification. He explained that Microsoft was unable to support strict OOXML compliance in Office 2010 due to various logistical issues and time constraints.
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Plain Sight on the PC: low-gravity, suicidal robot ninjas
Robots are pretty cool. So are ninjas. When you combine the two, you get robot ninjas, which are exponentially more awesome. Plain Sight, the first game from Beatnik Games, is a quirky multiplayer title that has players controlling fast-moving robot ninjas who attempt to kill each other as quickly as possible.
Players run their robots around stylized maps that are floating in space. In order to succeed, these adorable little bots have to kill all their friends by slicing them up with their swords and blowing them up with kamikaze-like attacks. There's no plot to speak of, nor is there a single-player campaign. There is only frantic multiplayer action in this game, and it's delightful.
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New memory management method give multicore boost to apps
Making serial software—programs where a series of operations happen in strict sequential order—exploit multicore processors is a pressing problem. A group at North Carolina State University has developed a technique that gives these serial programs a greater degree of parallelism automatically, yielding performance improvements of some 20 percent in real-world programs.
What NCSU did was to concentrate on memory allocation and deallocation. This memory management can occupy a substantial amount of processor time and is normally performed sequentially, but it has a property that makes it amenable to parallel techniques. Namely, programs don't depend on the result of memory deallocation. This means that deallocation tasks can safely be performed in the background, on another processor core, with the result that the program no longer needs to wait for deallocation to occur. With some tuning, NCSU achieved modest—but consistent—performance gains of around 20% in tasks that would normally be single-threaded.
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feature: Ars Technica reviews the iPad
The iPad isn't a big iPod touch—an iPod touch is a miniature iPad that restricts the full multitouch experience in exchange for offering greater portability. With the iPad, in contrast, you get multitouch the way it was meant to be done.
That's one of our many take-aways after having submerged ourselves in iPad land since launch. The larger screen doesn't just offer more space to work with—it opens up a different and more immersive user experience. Because of this different experience, though, the closed nature of the platform can get under some users' skin in ways the iPhone and iPod touch do not.
Still, the iPad is likely to just be a starting point for Apple and for multitouch computing in general. There are obvious downsides to the device—we'll tell you what those are—but it's clear that it does sit in its own category that floats somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, and it serves different purposes than either its smaller or bigger siblings. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
A large chunk of the Ars staff contributed to this review, either in the form of writing full sections or by offering feedback and insights based on their own experiences. Because the 3G + WiFi version is not yet on the market, we all tested a WiFi-only iPad. We think it's worth noting up front that the WiFi-only version is probably best if you only plan to use it at home or at Starbucks—you'll definitely miss not having an Internet connection while out and about, and the (non-contract) 3G data plans are not bad at all, so long as you can stomach the extra $130 you'll have to fork over for the privilege.
It's also the case that there are some parts of the iPad "experience" that we didn't get to cover here, but we think the next several pages will convey more about what using the iPad is like than you ever thought you wanted to know. So let's get on with it!
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DMCA takedowns: trampling on free speech rights?
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, rightsholders have an easy way to take down online material they dislike: send a takedown notice to a website or an ISP. The target of the letter has the right to object by filing a counter-notice, but even if that happens, the targeted material must remain offline for 10 to 14 days before being reposted. If this restriction isn't followed, the ISP or website in question could lose its "safe harbor" from lawsuits.
This provision of the law means that the DMCA can be used to silence speech, even in cases where the material has not be found by a judge to be infringing. This was an issue with John McCain's presidential campaign, where news organizations filed takedowns with YouTube about several McCain clips which used their footage. Despite the urgency of the issue (the election was only weeks away), YouTube publicly refused to put the clips back up before the counter-notice window expired; it had the legal right to do so, but the company refused to expose itself to the liability.
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Super Street Fighter IV hands-on: polished, fixed, $40
Super Street Fighter IV is the game that Street Fighter IV should have been—although the earlier game was pretty damn good. Featuring new characters, more faces from the past, new tweaks to balance, and an expanded online mode, this latest installment wipes away nearly every complaint gamers had about Street Fighter IV.
Capcom sent us an early build of the game, and it's been a welcome excuse to delve back into the world of Street Fighter. Why is this game, which is a retail release that will go for $40 at launch near the end of April, such a step forward? Let's take a look.
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TSA: don't remove your iPad for X-rays, unless we say so
iPad owners may get a (very) small reprieve when going through security checkpoints at US airports. The Transportation Security Administration told the Associated Press that iPads generally do not need to be removed from carry-on luggage when going through X-ray screening.
The TSA said that the iPad is much smaller and thinner than laptops, making it easier to see on the scanner. Also, the organization said that iPad users generally would not be carrying multiple bulky accessories, such as hard drives and chargers, which might otherwise obstruct a clear view of the device as it passes through X-ray equipment.
That "generally" qualifier is important, however. The TSA still reserves the right to ask you to remove your iPad from any bag if screeners can't get an unobstructed view of the device. This same exception is true for laptops that are carried in supposed "checkpoint friendly" laptop bags manufacturers began making available last year.
A spokesperson for the TSA told Associated Press that it is communicating its iPad policy to screeners. The policy will have no effect on the need to remove your shoes at security checkpoints or prevent you from being subjected to a potentially embarrassing full-body scan, however.
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Yelp to change some features in wake of lawsuit
A diverse group of businesses have joined in a class-action suit brought against Yelp for aggressive ad sales that the plaintiffs say amount to extortion. Yelp has made some changes to its features in an attempt to "clarify" how advertising affects a business listed on the site, though lawyers for the plaintiffs say that it doesn't directly address the practices that led to the lawsuit.
In February, a veterinary hospital in Long Beach, California accused Yelp of attempting to extort expensive advertising contracts from the company in exchange for removing false reviews left for the company on Yelp. Lawyers for the hospital filed a federal class-action lawsuit in California after discovering that numerous other businesses had recounted similar problems in articles published last year in the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and in particular the East Bay Express.
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Nokia looks to regain tablet relevance, plans new tablet
Following the launch of Apple's much-hyped iPad, a number of other companies are preparing to roll out competing products. According to an analyst, one of those companies is Nokia, which is said to be working on a new tablet device that will launch by the end of the year.
Nokia was one of the early players in the touchscreen Internet tablet market. The company debuted its 770 tablet in 2005, running Maemo, a variant of the open source Linux operating system. Nokia's tablets were designed to be operated with a stylus, but Maemo was redesigned with a more finger-friendly interface for the launch of the N900, Nokia's first Linux-based smartphone built with the tablet operating system.
Nokia has since teamed up with Intel in an effort to build an industry-standard Linux platform called Meego that will work across a wide range of mobile form factors and support both the ARM and x86 architectures. MeeGo incorporates some of the best elements of Maemo and Intel's Moblin netbook operating system. The path towards converging Maemo and Moblin is still at a relatively early stage, but a significant portion of the source code is already available.
Nokia has already said that it aims to deliver MeeGo-based devices by the end of the year. According to sources cited in a Reuters article, Nokia's MeeGo lineup could include an Internet tablet that is intended to compete with the iPad. Nokia has not confirmed plans for a tablet, so it's possible that it's just conjecture by the analysts. Based on supply chain considerations, the analysts believe that Nokia is aiming to get a tablet device on the shelves by the end of October so that it can meet holiday shopping demand.
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Son of GhostNet: China-based hacking targets India government
The people who uncovered GhostNet, an extensive cyber espionage network that targeted the Tibetan exile community, are back with a sequel. Starting with an infected machine that was found during that investigation, an international team of researchers has uncovered a completely separate network that primarily targeted the Indian government, and turned up some classified documents that had been obtained by the hackers. By reconstructing the network, the team was able to trace things back to the hacking community in Chengdu, China.
The work involved a collaboration between the Information Warfare Monitor and the Shadowserver Foundation, but, over the course of its work, involved dozens of other security groups and experts. It also benefitted from extensive cooperation with the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which had previously approached the security researchers in response to security lapses that unearthed GhostNet. The researchers take what they term a "fusion methodology," which is basically a combination of fieldwork—studying infected systems in situ—with standard security approaches.
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Windstream in windstorm over ISP's search redirects
Responding to a medium-sized uproar, Windstream Communications says it is sorry about those customer searches performed by Firefox users and redirected from Google to its own search engine, and the Little Rock, Arkansas-based ISP has now got the situation under control.
"Windstream implemented a network change on Friday, April 2 that affected certain customer Web browser search box queries, producing search results inconsistent with Windstream's prior practices," a spokesperson for the voice/DSL service told us. "Windstream successfully implemented configuration changes today to restore original functionality to these search queries after hearing from affected customers."
The question, of course, is whether the company accidentally or deliberately rigged its network software to produce those "inconsistent" results. We asked, but not surprisingly didn't get an answer to that query.
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Court: FCC had no right to sanction Comcast for P2P blocking
The FCC's decision to sanction Comcast for its 2007 P2P blocking was overruled today by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The question before the court was whether the FCC had the legal authority to "regulate an Internet service provider's network management practice." According to a three-judge panel, "the Commission has failed to make that showing" and the FCC's order against Comcast is tossed.
When the complaints against Comcast first surfaced, they noted that the company was violating the FCC's "Internet Policy Statement" drafted in 2005. That statement provided "four freedoms" to Internet users, including freedom from traffic discrimination apart from reasonable network management. The FCC decided that Comcast's actions had not been "reasonable network management," but Comcast took to the agency to court, arguing that the FCC had no right to regulate its network management practices at all.
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Xbox 360 USB storage is live, with list of gotchas
Joystiq broke the story that USB storage was coming to the Xbox 360; today, the update goes live. A quick download, and suddenly you're not dependent on Microsoft to sell you overpriced hard drives. Of course, the ability to use USB storage comes with a few limitations.
The storage device has to be over 1GB. You can only use 16GB of the storage device, no matter how large it is. You can use up to two devices at a time, giving you 32GB of storage. In other words, if you have a bunch of small USB sticks kicking around the house, you suddenly have a good reason to use them on something.
The official FAQ answers the question about why the usable space is limited, but the attitude seems to be that it's better than nothing. "Supporting USB storage devices up to 16GB in size is a huge increase in storage over any solid state memory storage solutions currently available for Xbox 360. Users that need more storage have options in the Xbox 360 hard drives, which are available for purchase separately."
While this is much better than spending $130 on a 250GB hard drive, the limitations dull our enthusiasm a bit. Microsoft couldn't just unlock the system so you can hook up a single, large USB drive? It is better than nothing at least, and it's available now.
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EU browser ballot sometimes hidden by IE wizard
Another week, another complaint about the IE browser ballot. Opera—the company whose complaint triggered the EU's investigation in the first place—has identified another issue with the browser ballot. Under certain circumstances the browser ballot is obscured by Internet Explorer configuration dialog boxes, and is only visible once the boxes are dismissed.
When Internet Explorer is used for the first time, a short setup wizard is shown to allow the user to select the default search engine, accelerators, and other things. The browser ballot itself is presented using Internet Explorer. If the two events coincide—the first use of Internet Explorer and the display of the browser ballot—then the setup wizard is shown first, with the browser ballot hidden behind it. Opera's concern is that after clicking through several screens of setup wizard, users won't pay attention to the browser ballot, and will instead dismiss it, opting to choose later.
Hakon Wium Lie, the company's CTO, has not yet said whether the company will make a formal complaint to the EU over the behavior; though the company has better things to do, he admits to being stubborn about the issue and that he wants the ballot to work properly.
Is this a big deal? Microsoft thinks not. Redmond says that the scenario is an unlikely one, because it requires Internet Explorer to be newly upgraded at the same time as the brower ballot patch is installed. Since Internet Explorer 8 has been out for a year now, most users who are going to install it through Windows Update probably already have done so. As such, most users given the browser ballot will be able to see it unimpeded.
The problem might be more apparent for new Winodws 7 users for whom IE8 is preinstalled; a conscientious user installing everything that Windows Update has to offer prior to using the machine in earnest might well face the situation where IE8's initial setup wizard is kicked off by the ballot. But this seems a minor problem in practice. Even when dismissed, the ballot should be shown at a later date. The idea that users will in some sense stop caring about the ballot after clicking through the wizard also seems dubious; though the wizard can have up to 10 screens, the default is to show far fewer.
Microsoft has already amended the browser ballot to redress one criticism, after flaws were found in the initial version's randomization algorithm. A complaint that the ballot's design unfairly disadvantages minority browsers has not, however, resulted in any alterations so far. Given that Redmond regards the scenario as "unrealistic," it seems unlikely that this complaint will prompt the company to make changes.
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IBM breaks OSS patent promise, targets mainframe emulator
IBM is threatening to pursue legal action against TurboHercules, a company that sells services relating to the open source Hercules project, an emulator that allows conventional computers with mainstream operating systems to run software that is designed for IBM System Z mainframe hardware.
In a letter that IBM mainframe CTO Mark Anzani recently sent to TurboHercules, Big Blue says that it has "substantial concerns" that the Hercules project infringes on its patents. The letter is a brusque half-page, but was sent with nine additional pages that list a "non-exhaustive" selection of patents that IBM believes are infringed by the open source emulator.
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feature: Lies and gaming: Evony responds to Ars
Last week was pretty big for Evony, but probably not in the way its developers hoped. Though Evony Age II saw its final launch, the game gained much more public attention because of the lawsuit it was embroiled in with a critical blogger. Ars Technica's own feature about Evony generated a lot of responses: the general consensus among readers who commented or sent in e-mail responses was that both the game and the various companies associated with it were definitely behaving in shady ways.
One somewhat unexpected result from our original story was that vice director of development for Evony, LLC and an executive from associated-corporation, Regan Mercantile, sat down for a phone interview with Ars that was courteous and civil.
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Is permission needed to retweet hot news?
When an aggregator like Google News publishes newspaper headlines, is the company treading on thin ice? What about aggregators that publish headlines and a one-line excerpt? What about those that simply rewrite the facts contained in the story and publish a new account in their own words?
Newspapers have long objected to these practices, arguing that they dilute the value of their own work. Case in point: last month, Laura Malone of the Associated Press appeared at a Federal Trade Commission conference on the future of news and told the assembled audience (read the transcript PDF):
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Buying 30 min. of primetime: Modern Family becomes iPad ad
It's the kind of good publicity Apple couldn't buy—ABC's terrific new comedy Modern Family made the quest to buy a launch-day iPad the main plot of last week's episode.
Three lines into the opening scene, the plot becomes clear—and the unabashed iPad praise begins in earnest (Steve Jobs and God are also linked). Gadget hound and all-around "cool dad" Phil wants an iPad for his birthday; his wife Claire is skeptical, but open to learning more!
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HP Slate pricing and specs leak: Atom CPU, 1080p video
It looks like HP employees have been given an internal HP Slate presentation comparing it to the Apple iPad, according to a slide obtained by Engadget. The device will cost either $549 for the 32GB flash storage version or $599 version for the 64GB version.
Both versions sport a 8.9-" 1024 x 600 capacitive multitouch display, a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor with UMA graphics, an accelerator for 1080p video playback, and 1GB of non-upgradeable RAM. They'll also include a two-cell five-hour battery, an SDHC slot, two cameras, a USB port, a SIM card slot for the optional 3G modem, and a dock connector for power, audio, and HDMI out. The included Windows 7 edition will be Home Premium.
Those are the unofficial details, anyway. Three months ago, HP went on record to explain how the project started and gave some vague details on the product: thin, light, somewhere between 4 to 10 inches, and be able take on the e-reader market, currently dominated by Sony and Amazon, head on. 2010 is the year for slates, HP said, and that's thanks to a convergence of low-cost and low-power processors as well as the touch-aware Windows 7. The company would only confirm that the tablet would be out this year, would be running Microsoft's latest and greatest, and will cost you less than $1,500.
The questions that have yet to be answered either by HP or by rumors are mainly around what software it will feature and how exactly Windows 7 will be customized to work on the slate (though the slide does mention "HP touch-optimized UI").
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HTML5 and WebGL bring Quake to the browser
The developers behind the GWT Java framework have implemented a port of Quake 2 that runs natively in modern Web browsers. It takes advantage of recent innovations in emerging standards-based Web technologies such as WebGL and WebSockets.
GWT is designed to enable Web application development with Java. Developers can benefit from Java's static typing and more rigidly structured architecture. It generates the requisite JavaScript code that is needed for the application's client-side components. GWT powers several high-profile Google Web applications, including Google Wave. The GWT developers implemented browser-based Quake by using a Java port of the Quake 2 engine on top of GWT.
GWT and the Java-based Quake engine both had to be extended and modified extensively in order for the pairing to work, but the effort paid off. It serves as a compelling example of how emerging standards are becoming increasingly capable of delivering all of the necessary functionality for interactive 3D network gaming.
As some readers might remember, Google released a Quake demo for Native Client (NaCl) when the plug-in was first announced in 2008. The state of open Web technologies has clearly advanced since that time. It's no longer necessary to rely on plugins to deliver this kind of functionality.
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Canonical announces phone sync for Ubuntu One subscribers
Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, announced today that its Ubuntu One cloud service will soon gain support for mobile contact synchronization. The feature will be available to users who are paying for the higher tier of Ubuntu One service.
Canonical officially launched the Ubuntu One service last year alongside the release of Ubuntu 9.10. The service allows users to keep files and some application data synchronized between multiple computers. The company is planning to roll out several significant new Ubuntu One features when Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed Lucid Lynx, is released later this month. The new Ubuntu One music store, which is integrated into the Rhythmbox audio player, will use Ubuntu One to deploy purchased music to all of the user's computers. Much like the music store, the new mobile synchronization features are opening up for testing, but will officially launch alongside Ubuntu 10.04.
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Apple not ignoring MacBooks this month despite mobile mania
We know many of our readers are thinking, "Enough with the iPad, where are the new Core i5 and Core i7 MacBook Pros?" It appears as though we may get our answer yet this month, as Taiwanese component suppliers suggest production has ramped up for new Apple notebooks in the past several days.
A report from the Taiwan-based Apple Daily (via MacRumors) suggests that Apple will release an updated line of notebooks featuring updated Intel processors sometime this month. The updated MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models were scheduled to launch well before the iPad, but several Taiwanese component suppliers suggested that constrained supply of 32nm Arrandale parts caused a delay. Suppliers are saying that the processors are now plentiful enough to complete planned production.
The Apple Daily report also specifically mentions that the updated laptop models are expected to offer hard drives up to 640GB or SSDs up to 248GB. The battery life of the updated models may also be pushed to eight hours across the board, up from the seven hours quoted for current models. The increased efficiency may likely come from NVIDIA's Optimus platform, which can switch on-the-fly between a dedicated GPU and the integrated graphics included in the Core i3, i5, and i7 packages.
We have also heard through the grapveine that an update might come as early as next week, though this is unconfirmed. However, in light of both rumors pointing to updates to Apple's notebooks happening this month, we remain hopeful that the information has a kernel of truth.
This April mobile blitz is also expected to be followed in a few months with updates to Apple's Mac Pro and Cinema Display lines, in keeping with Steve Jobs' promise that Apple will release a "very strong" line-up of new products this year.
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Reminder: Ars Technica liveblog of iPhone 4.0 event
Apple has announced a special event in Cupertino on Thursday April 8th, 2010. The event starts at 10:00a, PT (see it in your timezone), and will cover—at the very least—the next iteration of Apple's iPhone OS. Ars Technica will of course be present and liveblogging the event for our readers.
Bookmark this page or sign up in this post for an e-mail reminder when we start live updates on Thursday.
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It looks like time to build an Atlantic seaboard wind grid
One of the greatest challenges of integrating renewable power into the US grid is its intermittent nature. This is especially true for wind power, which is prone to rapid fluctuations that can leave utilities scrambling to either add or dump power. But the temptation of wind is large—the US has wind resources to cover 23 times its current electric use—and that has led to many ideas about how best to deal with the erratic supply. A study that will appear in PNAS later this week suggests a radical solution: connect offshore wind up the entire Eastern Seaboard of the US into a single, huge, baseline generating system.
The authors of the new study note that, currently at least, the fluctuations in wind power are handled by redundant generating and transmission equipment, which generally involves the burning of fossil fuels when the wind slacks off. One of the two major alternatives currently under consideration involves the use of energy storage, either large, on-grid facilities, or ad-hoc aggregation of the excess capacity in items like electric vehicles. The final option, and the one they consider, is the potential to aggregate geographically diverse collections of wind farms.
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