iPad WiFi + 3G day is today; here's our data plan primer
The 3G radio-equipped iPad model makes its official debut today. Apple Stores will be closing between 4 and 5pm to prepare, with in-store sales beginning at 5pm. If you preordered one early, chances are yours will be delivered in the next few hours, though we have heard that some customers got theirs a little early. For those readers who are opting for 3G capabilities, we wanted to give an idea of how the different mobile data options might impact you.
The WiFi + 3G iPad enables wireless access even when away from a WiFi network, but differs from the iPhone in a few key ways. Unlike the iPhone, it doesn't have built-in telephony capabilities—so no calls or texts. Instead of just one $29.99 unlimited data plan, there are two different data plan options. And instead of being bound by a two-year contract, data plans are prepaid, and no contract is required.
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Pot, meet kettle: a response to Steve Jobs' letter on Flash
Steve Jobs' recent missive on the deficiencies of Adobe's Flash is still reverberating around the Internet. In this guest editorial, John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation responds, arguing that Apple is presenting users with a false choice between Adobe's proprietary software and Apple's walled garden.
Watching two proprietary software companies deeply opposed to computer user freedom lob accusations back and forth about who is more opposed to freedom has been surreal, to say the least. But what's been crystal clear is that the freedom these companies are arguing about is their own, not that of their users. And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all—it is the ability to control those users. Adobe is mad at Apple for not letting Adobe control iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users via Flash, and Apple is mad at Adobe for suggesting that Apple is arbitrarily abusing its control over Application Store users.
Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash" is the latest volley in this bout between pot and kettle, and while it makes many dead-on criticisms of Adobe and Flash, it does not change the fundamental character of this disagreement, nor does it solve any concerns about Apple's broader intentions.
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Final Fantasy it ain't: Ars reviews NIER
It's not surprising that Square-Enix released NIER after Final Fantasy XIII came out. By releasing a well-made action-heavy RPG, unwary gamers are likely to assume that NIER will feature similar fare; including a strong story, fantastic production values, and engaging gameplay mechanics. Sadly, this is not the case. Square-Enix outsourced the game to Cavia, the company responsible for other such unremarkable titles like Drakengard and Bulletwitch, and the result is just as unimpressive.
The story begins promisingly enough, with a man and his daughter scraping out an meager existence in the ruins of a massive city that's being ravaged by unnamed monsters. The kid has a terrible cough, so you set out to find some food and end up in a massive battle outside the ruins that serve as your shelter. This skirmish showcases how fast-paced things will be later on when your character has managed to level up and has unlocked spells and special attacks; the monsters are particularly fascinating, seemingly constructed out of abstract binary magics that bleed when you hit them. The scene ends on a climactic note when your daughter dies in your arms.
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Google reportedly preparing to intro TV software next month
The Google TV—or rather, Google's software for set-top boxes—is one step closer to reality, according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal. Google is reportedly preparing to announce the software at next month's Google I/O conference, where developers may be able to get their feet wet writing applications for the platform, though the sources cautioned that Google might back off on the announcement if it's not quite ready by then.
Google's TV plans have yet to be officially confirmed, though they have been rumored for at least a month now. Consistent with the company's strategy in other areas, Google isn't expected to be involved in manufacturing set-top boxes; rather, the company is supposedly developing a version of Android that would be especially conducive to the big screen. Third-party developers would then be able to write their own apps for the devices, giving more openness and flexibility to people's TV watching habits.
According to the WSJ, hardware makers like Sony, Intel, and Logitech are interested in rolling out devices that work with Google's software. On top of that, Google is reportedly in the process of testing a sort of "television search" with the Dish Network, which allows users to search for content on the Internet and from Dish's programming.
We're still left a little unsure of how well the Google TV project will succeed, given the fact that there are already a handful of other set-top boxes available (and some of them for pretty cheap). However, if the UI is good and the developer community gets on board, there's potential for this device (or, more likely: devices) to fill a small gap in the market. After all, there are few set-top boxes right now that aren't full-blown HTPCs, but still give developers the freedom to develop their own apps, and their growing familiarity with Android—thanks to the mobile world—would certainly help.
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Courier no more, not that it ever really was: a post mortem
It was confirmed yesterday that Microsoft's Courier project has been cancelled. The two-screen tablet prototype with its hybrid pen/multitouch interface was hotly anticipated ever since the first pictures and videos were shown. But now it is to be no more.
The product was never externally announced—we only know about it through leaks—and it has now been confirmed that Microsoft has no plans to put the concept into production. The first and only official confirmation of the project was to announce its death.
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New Call of Duty called Black Ops: single, multi, co-op play
While Activision has been pretty busy this week—being sued by Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward and signing a decade-long publishing deal with Halo developer Bungie—the publisher still made the time to announce the next game in the Call of Duty franchise. Dubbed CoD: Black Ops, the game will be developed by Treyarch—the team behind CoD: World At War—and is expected to be released on November 9.
"We can't wait for our community to experience Call of Duty: Black Ops," Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia said. "We have focused our entire studio on this game, with dedicated multiplayer, single-player and co-op teams creating the most intense, gripping and riveting experience possible for our fans on all fronts."
Aside from the developer, release date, and title, details are nonexistent on the next entry in the CoD franchise. But that shouldn't be the case for long, as the game will make its debut on GameTrailers TV later today. You can also stay tuned to the game's official site for more details.
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Draining glacial lakes causes a big chill
For most of our current geologic period, the Holocene, temperatures seem to have fluctuated within a narrow range, indicating a fairly stable climate. But the end of the glacial period that preceded the Holocene saw a series of rapid temperature changes, with swings of up to 10°C in as little as a few centuries; the world would seem to be just about out of the glacial period, only to be plunged back into the cold for centuries. In the last few weeks, however, a couple of papers have indicated that these cold snaps may have had a single underlying cause: the sudden draining of massive glacial lakes left behind by the ice.
The idea that the melting that produced glacial lakes could ultimately have an enormous cooling effect on the climate may seem counterintuitive, but it's based on fairly straightforward geography. Large areas of North America drain northwards, through the St. Lawrence River basin or into Hudson Bay. During the last glacial period, these outlets were trapped under a massive ice sheet, leaving the water nowhere to go. So it built up into enormous glacial lakes, such as Lake Agassiz (shown below), until the lake surface reached a level where drainage would take place to the south.
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The day the music dies: Lala flips the off switch May 31 (Updated)
Online CD swapping service turned online music streaming service Lala is beginning the process of shutting down starting today. The service is no longer accepting new users, and current users won't be able to upload new songs from their library. Web streaming and mp3 downloads will continue to be available until May 31.
Lala spent the last couple of years transforming itself into a viable streaming service, offering DRM-free mp3 downloads as well as a 10¢ per song web streaming option. Last fall, the company also struck a deal with Google to provide streaming music clips for relevant artist, song, or lyric searches. Despite its successes, Lala wasn't yet in a position to turn a profit any time soon.
Then this past December, Apple acquired Lala without indicating its plans for the service. Several reports suggested that Apple would fold Lala into iTunes, either offering its own streaming service, or developing a cloud-based alternative to the local iTunes library. Such a service could be accessible from any web browser when away from home, and likely from Apple's stable of mobile devices, though the company had made no announcement to offer such a service.
Lala's website explains that users will (of course) be able to keep any downloaded songs. The full balance spent on web song purchases, along with any unused wallet or gift card balance will be transferred automatically to iTunes Store credit. Users have the option to request a refund of wallet credit only in the form of a check, as long as that request is received before May 31.
Links to Lala are still showing up in Google searches this morning, though it seems likely this may go away at the end of May as well. Apple had not responded to our request for comment at the time of publishing.
UPDATE: Apple confirmed that Lala as a company will cease to exist after May 31, and by extension will no longer have streaming songs for Google search results. If or when a replacement service might becoming, Apple wouldn't say, as it does not comment about future products or services.
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Tackling science education's jargon problem
The United States may be mildly embarrassed about its difficulties with science and technology literacy, but it is still struggling with how to fix it. A perspective published in Science tackles one likely hurdle: vocabulary and reading comprehension of scientific text. In the article, Catherine Snow of the Harvard School of Education asserts that it's the students' failure to comprehend the highly conceptual and precise wording that exists in academic publications that is making science hard for them. We need to assess why we force students to deal with jargon if we want the quality of science education to move forward.
Snow defines academic language as the polar opposite of casual conversations: dense sets of text that often using grammatical structures that embed ideas within ideas ("The wheel was invented. It made transport easier," as opposed to "The wheel's invention made transport easier"). She notes that, even though modern textbooks make a point of defining difficult academic terms, they often do so via similarly difficult terms, creating a kind of bottomless comprehension pit.
As an example, she cites a textbook definition of torque that uses the words "product," "magnitude," "force," and "lever"—words that a student will probably have encountered before torque, but are difficult to synthesize when used all together. By contrast, a webpage on torque proved much easier to read because of its expressive, personal tone and casual language.
Still, Snow asserts that we shouldn't abandon textbooks in favor of Wikipedia—while science and tech vocabulary can be hard to swallow at first, the words are far more precise, help us communicate efficiently, and avoid redundancy, which would be a far worse crime than difficulty. Imagine if instead of saying "electron," we had to say "a tiny piece of matter that has a negative charge." (It's worth noting that even this definition has conceptual words that you'd have to learn before you'd know what an electron is.)
So what are kids supposed to do with all of these impenetrable words and concepts nested within one another? Snow says that education systems need a new focus on scientific terms—not just what they mean, but how they're used. We also need to deal with words used to talk more broadly about science like "data," disprove," and "interpret." While students can't meet all of the demands of academic language by middle or high school, a system that nails down understanding of these words would provide a solid foundation to build on later. And that seems necessary if the students are to pursue science- or technology-related careers.
Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1182597 (About DOIs).
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Net neutrality: would it have killed the iPhone?
Now here's an interesting claim: had net neutrality been the law of the land several years back, we might not have the iPhone.
It's an idea buried in Bret "Exacloud" Swanson's recent comments to the FCC on net neutrality. We've already noted his use of the new term "exacloud," but there's another surprise buried in the short document.
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Search neutrality? How Google became a "neutrality" target
If ISPs should be subject to "net neutrality," should companies like Google be subject to "search neutrality"?
When we wrote recently about the idea of "search neutrality," some readers seemed to believe that we had coined the term, but nothing could be further from the truth. "Search neutrality" now fills the FCC filings of companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T, all of whom see no reason why their businesses should be picked out for regulatory scrutiny while Google goes about its business unmolested.
So where did the idea of search neutrality come from, and what does it mean?
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ActiveSync, SSL coming to Hotmail
More information is being revealed about the next iteration of Microsoft's Live-branded products. We know when the new programs are going to start rolling out, we know that Windows XP won't be supported, and we know a lot about the features of the next Windows Live Messenger.
Now Windows Live Hotmail is in the spotlight. The web front-end gets a load of new bells and whistles, but two new features stand out in particular.
Following in the footsteps of Google's Gmail, Hotmail Wave 4 will offer full-session SSL. Presently, logging in to Hotmail uses HTTPS to protect user credentials from attack, but e-mail itself is delivered over unsecured HTTP. Gmail switched to using HTTPS for the entire session—both logging in and reading/sending mail—by default in January (previously, it was an opt-in feature).
In Wave 4, Hotmail is following suit, offering HTTPS encryption for mail access as well as authentication. With the most valuable part of a mailbox often being the mail itself, not the credentials used to access it, this is a welcome change.
The other big news is Hotmail will offer ActiveSync support. ActiveSync is used by Exchange to provide push mail and other facilities to smartphones. By adding ActiveSync to Hotmail, Microsoft is extending these features to 300 million smartphones, giving Hotmail-using consumers the full seamless sync experience on their phones.
This does still leave Hotmail stuck behind proprietary protocols, in contrast to the IMAP available to Gmail. IMAP, like ActiveSync, supports push mail and mailbox syncing. The upside to ActiveSync is that it works for more than just mail; providing synchronization of contacts and calendars.
Taken together, these new features make for a compelling update for Hotmail users. Live Wave 4 should rolling out in June.
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Science education vs. research: a zero-sum game?
Recent studies have shown that American students greatly underperform many of their global peers in the science sections of standardized tests. The US has the largest economy in the world and spends a disproportionately large percent of its GDP on scientific research, so why aren't our students excelling in science? The problem may not be purely financial: science programs in both rich and poor nations are not educating students as effectively as they should. A new study from Nature Publishing Group (NPG) suggests that emphasis on research at the expense of teaching at the university level may be partially responsible for the scientific underperformance of advanced students worldwide.
This survey was the first phase in the NPG's multi-part endeavor to uncover the weaknesses in global scientific education and suggest potential solutions. (The endeavor coincides with NPG's launch of Scitable, an education-focused Web portal.) Here, the goal was to identify whether faculty attitudes toward teaching may be negatively affecting the education and performance of students in science. To get at this issue, NPG surveyed 450 university faculty members in over 30 countries to get their views on their research and teaching responsibilities.
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Devs have mixed feelings on Mac taking back seat at WWDC
When Apple announced this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, there were two major differences compared to WWDCs past. One is that Apple waited until the end up April to announce that the conference would take place in early June, giving developers just over five weeks to clear schedules, book flights, and secure hotel rooms. The other is that Apple is clearly focusing this year's conference on iPhone OS, and for the first time since Apple started giving awards in 1997, the company won't be awarding any Apple Design Awards for Mac applications. Combined with the recent retiring of the Mac Downloads page on Apple's website, many Mac developers feel shunned or ignored, though the overall community seems divided on what the changes mean for the future.
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Solar Dynamics Observatory gives us a deeper look at the Sun
Tomorrow's weather can be determined (over)simply by looking at what the weather's like wherever the wind is blowing from. Figuring out what the weather will be in space follows the same basic principle: look at what the Sun is doing now, and you'll get a sense of what will happen to the Earth in the near future.
Predicting what the Sun is doing or is going to do, however, is a much more complicated problem than standard terrestrial weather prediction. I have heard it said that the space weather prediction capabilities of today are about 30 to 40 years behind the capabilities of the weather forecast on the local news. To help us understand space weather and climate, NASA recently launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
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Google triumphs in US trademark, German copyright cases
The German Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Google Image Search, saying that the service's thumbnails don't infringe on anyone's copyrights. With Germany's highest court on its side, Google is understandably happy about the decision. In addition to the victory in Germany, Google also won a case in the US, with the judge saying that AdWords did not infringe on Rosetta Stone's trademark.
The German case has bounced around the German court system for several years now. According to Google, an artist had uploaded images of her paintings to her website, which was then indexed by Google Image Search. The thumbnails were displayed as part of Google's search results, leading the artist to accuse the company of copyright infringement. A German court finally ruled in October of 2008 that Google's thumbnails did, indeed, infringe on the artist's copyrights.
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Symantec snaps up crypto companies PGP, GuardianEdge
Computer security and backup giant Symantec has bought a pair of encryption companies: GuardianEdge, for $70 million, and PGP, for $300 million. GuardianEdge focuses on endpoint protection, offering a range of products for encryption of hard disks, removable storage, and smartphones. PGP offers both disk encryption and mail encryption software, along with systems for managing PKI. Both companies also have numerous existing government contracts.
Both companies already have OEM partnerships with Symantec, so effective integration into Symantec's existing software line-up is likely to be unproblematic. Symantec CEO Enrique Salem suggested that further integration with the company's existing backup, security, and Software as a Service products will be forthcoming.
Symantec has made many acquisitions in its past, including the record $13.5 billion purchase of backup company Veritas. The PGP and GuardianEdge purchases are the first major acquisitions in the encryption market.
With greater use of mobile devices, and increasing awareness of data loss, robust mobile encryption is of growing importance. Symantec said that integration of these new products will be instrumental in providing policy-driven data protection systems.
The deal is still subject to regulatory approval. If all goes well, it should complete in June.
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Alan Wake preview: a haunted man in an amazing game
Alan Wake has a pretty good life, all things considered. He's a successful author, he has a beautiful wife, and his agent is just waiting for the next book. The problem is that for two years, Wake hasn't been able to write. The words simply aren't coming. So his wife has an idea: take a vacation to the small town of Bright Falls to get away from everything.
Alan Wake, an Xbox 360 exclusive from Remedy Entertainment, has been in production a very long time; usually not the best sign in this business. We have a retail, final copy of the game in our office, and I spent last night delving into the world of a writer whose imagination may be a little more powerful than he realized. We're allowed to talk about the first "episode" of the game, so let's dig into what makes this so impressive.
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Ubuntu 10.04 arrives with extended support (and less brown )
Canonical has announced the official release of Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed Lucid Lynx. After six months of development, the stealthy cat has emerged from the jungle and is ready to leap onto users' desktops. The new version of the popular Linux distribution delivers a visual refresh, updated software, and a number of noteworthy new features.
Ubuntu 10.04 is a long-term support (LTS) release, which means that its users will receive package updates for an extended period of time. Typical Ubuntu versions get 18 months of updates, but LTS releases are supported for three years on desktop computers and five years on servers. Another significant characteristic of LTS releases is that they are built with a stronger emphasis on stability. Instead of loading in a pile of experimental new features, the developers focus on quality control and aim to make the software more reliable. Due to the extended support cycle and higher standard of robustness, LTS releases tend to be more appealing to business users and hardware makers.
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Botnet creator will plead guilty to selling code
One of two "hackers" allegedly responsible for a botnet attack in 2006 has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he built the botnet with the intent to sell its services to criminals. David Anthony Edwards will plead guilty in federal court Thursday, while his partner Thomas James Frederick Smith has already pleaded innocent in the case.
The two Texas men were accused of developing a 22,000-strong PC botnet and shopping its services around to customers at a rate of 15¢ per drone and in batches of 5,000. Essentially, a cybercriminal interested in carrying out an attack could rent out 10,000 of the infected computers to carry out an attack for about $1,500, or buy the code for the whole shebang for around $3,300. The software they developed to control the botnet was called Nettick.
In order to win the business of at least one client, Edwards and Smith decided to demo Nettick's capabilities. In August of 2006, the duo pointed the drones at ThePlanet.com, an ISP based out of Dallas. Soon thereafter, Edwards and Smith also broke into a hosting provider, T35 Hosting, and defaced the site, posting usernames and passwords of all T35's customers. (The client, apparently impressed, went ahead and bought the source code to Nettick.)
Almost three years later, Edwards and Smith were indicted, and now Edwards has signed a plea agreement in hopes of getting a reduced sentence. Edwards plans to plead guilty to one charge of Conspiracy to Intentionally Cause Damage to a Protected Computer and Commit Computer Fraud, which could net him maximum five years in prison. He could also face paying restitution and a $250,000 fine. Edward's partner apparently thinks that he can get a better deal by going to court, however, and faces trial on May 17.
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Linux on the console? Sony sued for removing PS3 support
Sony Computer Entertainment America has just been hit with a class action lawsuit in California over the company's recent decision to remove PlayStation 3 support for the Linux operating system in a firmware update.
This decision, in the words of the lawsuit, was an "intentional disablement of the valuable functionalities originally advertised as available with the Sony PlayStation 3 video game console. This disablement is not only a breach of the sales contract between Sony and its customers and a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, but it is also an unfair and deceptive business practice perpetrated on millions of unsuspecting consumers."
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Sorting out viable induced stem cells from the duds
The ethical debate over the use of embryonic stem cells prompted researchers to look for alternatives that might be equally useful. A new paper published in Nature takes a closer look at a less controversial, and less reliable, kind of stem cell called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Its authors outline a way to identify which of the iPSCs will be able to develop into any tissue and which ones will be flops by looking for the imprinting of a particular gene cluster.
When gene clusters are imprinted, their expression is altered through chemical modification of DNA or changes in chromosome structure. Embryonic stem cells come with certain genes and gene clusters pre-imprinted as a result of the mother and father's influence. In order for other stem cells to be as useful as embryonic ones, it's likely that they must be imprinted the same way.
IPSCs are the result of activating genes expressed by stem cells in regular cells, causing them to revert to stem cell status. The big problem with iPSCs, though, is that they don't always function in quite the same way that embryonic stem cells do, and often fail to develop into the intended cell type.
When scientists studied a set of mouse-derived iPSCs, they found a correlation between poorly functioning iPSCs and their imprinting: the iPSCs that could not develop as expected had an imprinted Dlk-Dio3 gene cluster. IPSCs that had a normally expressed Dlk-Dio3 cluster, on the other hand, were able to develop fine. With this knowledge, researchers can filter a population of iPSCs for the imprinted cluster and remove the hampered cells from use.
While this doesn't solve any problems with regard to the somewhat high rate of impotent iPSCs, it does does provide a reliable way to identify the duds and remove them from use so that scientists only go forward with working, and ethically unmuddled, stem cells. Still, because iPSCs have a lengthy creation process and a high rate of these duds, we won't be mass-marketing new body parts just yet.
Nature, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/nature09017 (About DOIs).
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