Skate 3 demo arrives today on XBLA and PSN
With the third iteration of Skate on the way, the series—which was heralded as a refreshing change of pace compared to the sequel-heavy Tony Hawk series—is running the risk of becoming a watered-down franchise as well. Skate 2 managed to avoid being redundant by adding a bevy of features that added up to an engrossing skateboard experience. While Skate 3 won't be released until next month, you can see how it stacks up with a brand-new demo released today.
The demo will let players try out several different game modes, both single player and multiplayer. These include Domination, Own The Lot, and returning favorite Hall of Meat. You can also take the game's new Skate.School feature for a spin and explore the expanded customization features.
The main draw for the new Skate is the game's focus on co-op gameplay, something that isn't really on display in the demo. But it's still a good chance to explore what else is different this time around. And hey, it's more Skate. Nothing wrong with that.
The demo is available today for both the Xbox 360 and PS3. The full game, meanwhile, launches in North America on May 11.
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Welcome to Mound, MN: home of the $249.99 DSL broadband plan
There's yet another uproar over an ISP imposing Internet data caps on its customers and charging users who exceed them several hundred dollars a month. This time around, the service in question isn't Time Warner Cable—it's Minnesota-based telco Frontier Communications. Frontier isn't the biggest player on the block, but its network includes 2.8 million voice/broadband connections, the company generated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2008—and if you're a rural Verizon customer, Frontier could soon be your ISP.
Disclosure of Frontier's new pricing schedule comes from the outraged pages of stopthecap.com.
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Mobile Linux collaboration gets a boost as MeeGo grows
Opportunities for the open source Linux operating system in the mobile device market was a prominent theme of the keynote presentations at the Linux Collaboration Summit on Wednesday.
Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin discussed the value that Linux can bring to handset makers and mobile carriers, empowering them to build their own custom platforms and developer ecosystems around a common base of open Linux technology. Linux doesn't just reduce costs, says Zemlin, it also allows adopters in the mobile market to retain control over their products, obviating the need to make concessions to a platform vendor.
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1+1=? Finding the origin and impact of altered gene dose
In theory, we each have two copies of every gene; one on the chromosome from mom and the other on the chromosome from dad. In reality, this is not necessarily the case. The Human Genome Project revealed that Copy Number Variations (CNVs)—the presence of something other than two copies of a region of DNA due to its duplication or deletion—is quite widespread in humans. CNVs have been shown to be associated with a number of human maladies, including cancer and susceptibility or resistance to HIV infection. Although many CNVs have been identified, it has been difficult to determine the mechanism responsible for producing them. This is partially because fewer than 10 percent of known CNVs have been mapped to base pair resolution, so their precise boundaries are unknown.
High throughput approaches have thus far not been well suited to sequencing these breakpoints. Genome wide shotgun sequencing involves breaking the DNA into short stretches, which also generates breakpoints; designing primers for PCR based sequencing is tough when you don’t know the sequence flanking the region of interest.
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Congress outlaws all Caller ID spoofing (VoIP too)
The House has passed the "Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010" (PDF), which does exactly what its name would lead you to believe.
Under the bill, it becomes illegal "to cause any caller ID service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information, with the intent to defraud and deceive." The bill maintains an exemption for blocking one's own outgoing caller ID information, and law enforcement isn't affected.
The change will affect "any real time voice communications service, regardless of the technology or network utilized," so VoIP calls are included. In fact, the Congressional Research Service summary of the initial text makes clear that VoIP was a key target here.
The Senate has already passed its version of the bill back in February, so it should be signed into law soon.
CTIA - The Wireless Association said today that it supports "making caller identification spoofing illegal as the applications of such an activity are usually for malicious purposes."
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Machines left unpatched so Microsoft can avoid BSOD déjàvu
Microsoft is seeking to avoid a repeat of February's blue-screen problems with this month's bumper crop of Patch Tuesday patches. After installing the February updates, some users of Windows XP found their systems wouldn't boot. After investigation, this turned out to be due to an interaction between the Alureon rootkit and the patch for KB977165 which updates the Windows kernel. Microsoft has subsequently released tools that attempt to detect the rootkit and prevent installation of the patch if a machine appears compromised.
This month's patches also contain kernel updates, and so have the same incompatibility with the rootkit. As the bulletin for MS10-021 states, "This security update includes package detection logic that prevents the installation of the security update if certain abnormal conditions exist on 32-bit systems. These abnormal conditions on a system could be the result of an infection with a computer virus that modifies some operating system files, which renders the infected computer incompatible with the kernel update."
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Apple patches Pwn2Own exploit in Mac OS X
Apple issued Security Update 2010-003 on Wednesday afternoon for Mac OS X v.10.5.8 client and server, as well as Mac OS X v.10.6.3 client and server. The updates address an issue in the way Apple Type Services handles embedded fonts, preventing the “arbitrary execution of code” after a document is viewed or downloaded. Complete details about the update are available in the support section of Apple’s website.
Apple confirmed that the exploit was none other than the one that was discovered on the first day of the Pwn2Own contest that we reported on last month. The event marked the third year in a row in which security researcher Charlie Miller was able to compromise a Mac running OS X. At the time, many believed the hack exploited an issue in Safari but, as we discovered today, the problem stemmed from the Apple Type Services that Safari makes use of.
With this update, Apple has effectively patched half of the exploits found during this year's Pwn2Own. Still, Apple has yet to patch an iPhone vulnerability discovered by Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Philipp Weinmann, which allows undesired access to text messages in the iPhone OS.
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Reality behind reality: Ars talks to The Tester's winner
We were dubious when Sony announced that it was casting for The Tester, and we were increasingly uncomfortable about the show as details gradually made their way into the light. The fact that the show was being produced by 51 Minds—the same company that handled such gems as I Love Mondy and Megan Wants a Millionaire (which was yanked from the air when it turned out one of the contestants had murdered his wife)—did little to ease our worries. When the competition was finally aired on the PlayStation Network, initial reviews were generally pretty scathing.
The series' eight episode run came to an end last week, and Will Powers, AKA "Cyrus," managed to beat out ten other hopeful gamers to become the newest game tester at Sony's offices in San Diego. On top of a guaranteed job—which he will begin next Monday—Powers also received a $5,000 signing bonus for his troubles. Ars had the opportunity to talk to both Powers and SCEA release manager Brent Gocke (who also served as a panelist on The Tester) the day after the final episode was made available for download; both men were happy to talk about the show and their involvement, and their answers definitely painted the program in a different light.
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Infinity Ward staff exodus continues, 4 more leave studio
The drama at Infinity Ward continues, as reports abound about even more staff leaving the studio. These reports arrive just a day after reports came in that several key staff members left the studio behind Modern Warfare 2, following the lead of former studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella.
The news comes via Kotaku, who reports that four more staff members have left IW. These include MW2 lead designers Steve Fukuda and Zied Reike, programmer Rayme Vinson, and artist Chris Cherubini. Both Fukuda and Reike have been with the studio since 2002.
Not including West and Zampella, this brings the current total number of resignations to around 10, or about 10 percent of the studio. As of now, none of the ex-IW staffers—aside from former animator Bruce Ferriz, who told IGN he has joined Big Red Button Entertainment—have revealed their future plans, but it seems pretty likely that at least a few will end up at West and Zampella's brand new Respawn Entertainment.
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Saving energy when pre-processing biofuels
In process design and optimization, it is often advantageous to look at the most costly stages, where costs can be energy or raw materials used. For example, in chemical engineering designs, refrigeration or compression of gases is often one of the most expensive operations, so it provides a good place to start looking for energy savings. When it comes to the processing of organic feedstocks for use in biofuel operations, getting plant matter down to size often represents a significant cost, as grinding and milling do not come cheap.
New work by a team of researchers at Purdue University has found that the work done to reduce switchgrass to small particles in order to aid its processing is for naught. The study, published in the Transactions of the ASABE, looked at the effects that hammermilling had on the morphology of various feedstocks—corn, soybeans, and switchgrass. Raw corn and soybeans are nearly circular and have aspects ratios—a ratio of characteristic lengths of an object—close to one. Switchgrass, with its long narrow stalks, can have aspect ratios that range between 10 and 12. This shape causes the material to jam up when it "flows" from one processing unit to another in a plant.
Common wisdom holds that milling the switchgrass down makes it smaller and more spherical—bringing its aspect ratio closer to one—and allowing it to flow a bit more freely and resulting in less jams. The study here shows that this is not the case. The authors found that all three feedstocks maintained their circularity, roundness, and aspect ratio even as they were milled down to smaller and smaller sizes (at increasing levels of cost). The constant shape means that switchgrass will flow no better at smaller sizes, so further processing work is merely wasted effort. Milling switchgrass down to sizes below 6.4mm was just throwing money into the process line.
Those that have spent any significant time in the engineering field knows that cost savings and process advancements don't typically come in leaps and bounds. It is small, incremental knowledge gains such as these that make various processes more and more refined as time goes on.
Transactions of the ASABE. 53(1): 199-204. 2010
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X-Com returns, morphs into an FPS
Though the X-Com series is well-regarded for its tactical, turn-based strategy gameplay, 2K Games has decided to go in a completely different direction with the latest entry in the franchise. Developed by 2K Marin, the team behind BioShock 2, the new X-Com will be a first-person shooter.
"With BioShock 2, the team at 2K Marin proved themselves as masters of first-person, suspenseful storytelling, and with XCOM they will re-imagine and expand the rich lore of this revered franchise," 2K president Christoph Hartmann said. "Players will explore the world of XCOM from an immersive new perspective and experience firsthand the fear and tension of this gripping narrative ride."
Aside from a single screenshot, featuring a curiously retro looking spaceship, no actual gameplay details have been revealed at this point. However, on the game's official site, the developers have addressed the series' shift from turn-based strategy to FPS, saying, "By setting the game in a first-person perspective, players will be able to feel the tension and fear that comes with combating a faceless enemy that is violently probing and plotting its way into our world."
The game will be coming to the Xbox 360 and PC, though we don't yet have a release window.
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Blind refs & baby kissers: senators brawl over neutral net
Today's Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the National Broadband Plan turned into a plains states grudge match over network neutrality.
In the blue corner: Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), co-sponsor of net neutrality legislation, and serial emitter of colorful metaphors. Dorgan used his time questioning FCC Chair Julius Genachowski to trash Republican calls for "light touch" Internet regulation.
"I'm not a big fan of the light touch; I don't want overregulation, for sure, but... 6, 8, 10 years of willful blindness by referees is no way to deal with the free marketplace," he thundered.
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Hot news strikes again: site struggling after court decision
Financial website theflyonthewall.com has asked a federal judge to lift his injunction barring the site from immediately reporting stock recommendations from analysts, arguing that the ruling has hurt business and could eventually close the site. The request comes almost a month after the initial decision in New York, which the website is appealing, but it says it needs the ban to be lifted until a decision on the appeal has been made.
Previous to the injunction, The Fly on the Wall made a name for itself by publishing information from analyst recommendations almost immediately to its website. Merrill Lynch says this stock is a buy, while Barclays rates it a hold, etc. The site makes money from subscribers who pay to get access to this near-realtime information in order to manage their own stock portfolios.
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Review: Opera Mini for iPhone different, not exactly better
Opera announced on Monday that its Opera Mini for iPhone was approved by Apple for distribution via the App Store. Though App Store restrictions have so far limited alternate browsers to those that use the built-in capabilities of WebKit, Opera Mini is the first true alternative browser—rendering engine and all—to challenge Mobile Safari. And it's popular right now: it's at the top of the free app charts on the iTunes Store throughout Europe at the time of publication.
Opera Mini gets around Apple's restrictions on downloading and executing scripts—needed to execute JavaScript—by using a proxy server for all connections. When you request a webpage in Opera Mini, the request is sent to Opera's servers, which then download the page. Then Opera's servers prerender and repackage the content into an ostensibly wireless network-friendly package for quick downloading to a mobile device. Opera Mini then renders the content on your iPhone using its own rendering engine.
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Microsoft investigates as sweatshop spotlight shines on supplier
The conditions at factories in China are known to be particularly abysmal. A recent report by the National Labor Committee focuses on KYE Factory, which seems to be breaking every rule imaginable. According to worker estimates, Microsoft accounts for the largest proportion of production at KYE, at about 30 percent. Other major corporations outsourcing production to KYE include Hewlett Packard, Best Buy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Wi/IFC/Logitech, and Asus-Rd. For its part, Microsoft says it is investigating the environment outlined in the report.
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Tech prize awarded for plastics, processors, and solar cells
The 2010 winners have been announced for the Millennium Technology Prize, an award given every other year to individual inventors who are responsible for practical innovations. This time around, the awards went to three scientists for innovations in plastic electronics, the invention of the ARM microprocessor, and the development of dye-sensitized solar cells.
The Millennium Technology Prize was established in 2004 by the Technology Academy Finland to recognize practical contributions to the advancement of technology. The inaugural award went to Tim Berners-Lee, the person credited with inventing the World Wide Web. Entrants are evaluated on their work's impact on quality of life and sustainable development now and in the future, and how significantly their work contributes to technological change.
Professor Sir Richard Friend is one of the new laureates for his work in plastic electronics, and for his contribution to the creation of organic LEDs. His methods have given rise to many other polymer innovations, like a polymer transistor that can be dissolved into an ink to be printed onto circuit boards, as well as low-cost polymer solar cells.
Professor Stephen Furber received the award for his creation of the ARM microprocessors, which often can do the same amount of work as other processors with far fewer transistors and electricity. Twenty billion of them have been manufactured so far, and they've found uses in low-power devices like cell phones and MP3 players.
The last winner, Professor Michael Gratzel, is the inventor of the eponymous Gratzel cells, a variety of solar cells that perform artificial photosynthesis using dyes. Though Gratzel cells are still in development, they are cheaper and easier to make and use than their silicon-based counterparts.
The prize pool for the award this year is €1.1 million, divided among all the winners.
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Monitoring infrastructure with embedded nanosensors
All engineering products—chemical plants, bridges, buildings, oil rigs, you name it—come with some sort of fixed lifetime. It may be very long, but no (reasonable) engineer expects their designs to last forever. Tracking how well a structure is holding up relative to its design lifetime, however, can be a costly and challenging task.
The authors of a journal article, published in the current issue of International Journal of Materials and Structural Integrity, ask whether the use of micro- and nanosensors could enable the continual monitoring of existing structures. While buildings are designed to withstand nature, they are prone to continuous and uncontrollable degradation during their designed service lifespan. Whether the damage comes from weather, aging materials, tremors, or a simple lack of maintenance, structures break down.
The research team fabricated two types of sensors. The first was a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) for monitoring temperature and moisture content within structural concrete. The second was a nanosensor device that uses nanotubes to detect small cracks before they can become large cracks.
The paper concludes that "if designed properly, wireless MEMS and nanotechnology-based sensors could be used as embedded components to form self-sensing concrete structures." Given the costly nature of repairing or replacing major failures, the authors state that "information obtained from such monitoring techniques would allow the owners to make critical decisions regarding operation, maintenance, repair, and replacement under financial constraints."
International Journal of Materials and Structural Integrity, 2010. DOI: 10.1504/IJMSI.2010.032494 (About DOIs).
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Cable cord-cutters grow, but barriers still exist for most
Americans who have cancelled their cable or satellite subscriptions still represent less than three percent of the people who watch TV shows online, but the group is growing, and fast. A report (PDF) from the Convergence Consulting Group said that nearly 800,000 households in the US had ditched their TV subscriptions in favor of over-the-air and Internet options as of the end of 2009, and that number was expected to double by 2011. Still, this is just a fraction of the overall market, and there are some major barriers preventing most viewers from cutting the cord.
Convergence Consulting Group said that cord-cutters currently represent less than three percent of people who watch full TV shows online—that's because the majority of Americans use online video to supplement their TV viewing habits, not replace them. This is good news for the networks and advertisers, as ad revenue on traditional broadcasts is still many orders of magnitude higher than what can be scraped together online. This much is evidenced by some of Hulu's troubles in keeping popular shows on its site and its ad bucket full.
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Library of Congress: We're archiving every tweet ever made
Get ready for fame, tweeters of the world: the Library of Congress is archiving for posterity every public tweet made since the service went live back in 2006. Every. Single. Tweet.
The LOC announced the news, appropriately enough, on Twitter. Twitter isn't just about being pretentious and notifying the world about the contents of your lunch (though it's about those things too).
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Latest climate hack inquiry clears the CRU (again)
The controversy set off by the theft of e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit resulted in at least four independent inquiries. One took place at Penn State, home institution of Michael Mann, whose e-mails were among those released; Mann was largely cleared, although a more detailed examination of some issues is ongoing. A second was performed by the UK Parliament's Science and Technology Committee. This inquiry concluded that, although there was a "problematic" lack of transparency at the CRU, the e-mails did not reveal anything untoward. Now, the UEA's own inquiry into the matter has been completed, and it has reached similar conclusions: nobody at the CRU appears to have engaged in scientific malfeasance.
The panel set up by the UEA was comprised of an international group of researchers from institutions like MIT and Cambridge, and its charge was to examine the research performed by the CRU. "The essence of the criticism that the Panel was asked to address was that climatic data had been dishonestly selected, manipulated and/or presented to arrive at pre-determined conclusions that were not compatible with a fair interpretation of the original data," as the report puts it. After it examined a number of publications and conducted interviews with CRU staff members, the panel concluded that the criticisms didn't hold water.
In focusing on the CRU's work in climate proxy reconstructions and production of a global instrument record, the panel concluded that there often aren't "right" answers on which data to include and how to process it, and results continue to be refined as more data comes in—that's one reason why there are so many different proxy studies. Nevertheless, the panel concluded that there were scientific bases for the judgement calls made by the members of the CRU, and no evidence of "deliberate scientific malpractice."
The Panel did conclude that the work could have been strengthened by a greater collaboration with professional statisticians; the methods chosen by the CRU researchers were reasonable, but they weren't necessarily the best or most appropriate. As with the Parliamentary inquiry, the panel also suggests that a greater emphasis should be placed on the disclosure of data and methods, calling the CRU staff "dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention."
This leaves us with one formal inquiry still in progress, along with a follow-up on one aspect of Michael Mann's behavior. Unless either of these reaches conclusions that are radically different from the ones that preceded them, the matter will be considered settled, at least from the perspective of the governments involved and the academic community. Based on the responses to the earlier reports, however, there is substantial online community that will consider anything short of a complete repudiation of proxy and instrument records to be insufficient—there's little reason to expect that this new report will change their minds.
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Perl 5 development continues as version 5.12 released
The Perl 6 project, which aimed to radically reinvent the open source programming language, first began to take shape in 2000. A decade later, there are several implementations with varying levels of completeness, but it is still not ready to replace Perl 5 in production environments.
In order to ensure that Perl doesn't completely stagnate during the protracted revamp, a group of developers have decided to pull Perl 5 out of maintenance mode and begin actively enhancing it with new features. The result is Perl 5.12, which was officially released this week. It was preceded by 5.11, an experimental development release that was issued last year.
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