C4 Indie dev conference a casualty of App Store policies
Chicago developer Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch has announced that he is putting his highly regarded independent developer conference, C4, to sleep after a four-year run. Though many of the developers who attended the conference are sad to see it go, Rentzsch told Ars that he no longer has the "spirit," given some recent moves by Apple regarding iPhone development and a seeming lack of concern from the developer community.
C4 was inspired by both the MacHack conference as well as a one-time event in Chicago called Evening At Adler. MacHack started in 1986 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and had been a favorite "unconference" of Mac developers for years. Sadly, it folded in 2005 after a brief attempt to change its focus away from the Mac and towards general programming and hacking.
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Slamming lives! Telco fined $1.48 million for VoIP scam
If you thought that "slamming" was a thing of the past, you're mistaken. We're talking about somebody switching your phone carrier without permission, then sending you a bill. The practice continues, and its practitioners will lie to consumers to get their way.
Take the case of Silv Communications, a Los Angeles based interexchange carrier that routes and processes VoIP traffic for small businesses. The Federal Communications Commission proposed a $1.48 million fine for the company on Wednesday and noted that half of the 25 complaints it received involved some form of deception.
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Console Bad Company 2 gets new mode, PC servers hit snag
EA is releasing a new gameplay mode for Bad Company 2 in the near future, bringing four-player co-op to the game. Unfortunately, the content is only listed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but it's probably too early for PC gamers to give up hope.
Here's how EA described the mode:
"Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Onslaught mode can be played with up to four players across four multiplayer maps—Valparaiso, Atacama Desert, Isla Inocentes, and Nelson Bay—redesigned with new lighting, time of day, added vehicles and other effects. Each map has a dedicated gameplay focus, requiring different levels of teamwork in order to complete the objectives against an onslaught of enemy AI. Vehicle warfare comes to the forefront in Atacama Desert while Nelson Bay focuses squarely on infantry assault. Players can compete in squads and check individual progress via the dedicated Onslaught leaderboards.
Sounds pretty cool, right? We asked EA if the content would be coming to the PC version of the game, and were told that information on PC DLC would be coming "at a later date."
On the official forums, the problem became clear: what would happen to the servers? "The problem we have on PC is that all our servers are dedicated with providers," an Associate Producer of the game wrote. "Changing a server from Conquest 32 players to Onslaught 4 players cuts out 28 player slots from the total amount available. This could have a dramatic affect on the PC online environment if enough servers changed to Onslaught." They are looking into ways of bringing the content to the PC without asking people to effectively give up their servers to a smaller experience.
We're hoping for a quick solution, as Onslaught sounds like a great time.
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Adobe takes case against Apple to 'Net with ad, open letter
Adobe launched an ad campaign Thursday that pushes back against Apple's decision to outlaw most third-party compilers from creating iPhone OS apps. The ad, spotted running on Ars as well as other sites, says "We [heart] Apple," before flipping over to say that the company doesn't support "taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web."
Clicking through on the ad takes you to a page on Adobe's site with a statement from Adobe on the value of choice, highlighting its support for HTML5, CSS, and H.264 "in addition to our own technologies." There is also an open letter from Adobe's founders, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock. The two state that they believe in the value of open markets as well as the freedom of choice.
"No company—no matter how big or how creative—should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web," reads the letter. "We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web—the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time."
It's clear why Adobe decided to move forward with this fairly aggressive campaign. Adobe has been on the wrong end of some beatdowns lately from both Apple and the Apple-using community, which came to a head two weeks ago when Apple CEO Steve Jobs published his own open letter on Flash. In the letter, Jobs waxed eloquent about Flash's performance on mobile devices, Flash being a closed platform itself, and the evils of cross-platform development tools.
A full 50 percent of Ars readers seemed to agree that most of Jobs' points were valid, though there were plenty who said they weren't fully on board with Apple's latest approach. Even users who recognize Flash's downsides are left with a bad taste in their mouths over Apple's ban on cross-platform tools—after all, there are plenty other tools out there besides Flash.
One thing is sure: if Adobe is willing to drop big money on an ad campaign to defend itself, it's beginning to feel threatened.
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First look: Office Mobile 2010 for Windows Mobile 6.x
Coinciding with this week's release to business users of Office 2010, Microsoft has also released Office Mobile 2010 on the Windows Phone Marketplace. As with previous versions of Office Mobile, the new version will be a free upgrade for existing users of Office Mobile.
The new version updates Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Work has been done to improve the touch-friendliness of the applications, and to extend their editing capabilities. There's also SharePoint integration courtesy of the new SharePoint Workspace application.
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Wanted: gadgets to stop cell phone use in prisons
The campaign to rid our nation's prisons of cell phones went to the next level on Wednesday, with a call from the Department of Commerce for intel on devices that can get the situation under control. The government is "seeking comment on technical approaches" to the problem, Commerce says.
"The illicit use of cell phones by prisoners is a danger to public safety and must be addressed," declared the DoC's National Telecommunications and Information Administration boss Lawrence Strickling upon release of a Notice of Inquiry. "At the same time, we need to make sure that any technical solutions do not interfere with 911 calls, government or other legitimate cell phone use."
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Microsoft: MSE safe from Windows kernel hook attack
Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), the software giant's free antimalware solution, is one of the few products that is not affected by the recently rediscovered method for disabling security software on Windows. MSE does not use SSDT hooks, so its real-time protection cannot be disabled via this method.
When the report was first published, we noticed that MSE was not on the list of affected products and contacted Microsoft for clarification. "Microsoft is aware of research published by Matousec and we are investigating the issue," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "Based on available information, we do not believe our products are affected due to the design of our real-time protection. We are working to confirm this."
Microsoft said someone would get back to us, but we figured it would be quicker to go straight to the source. "As we assumed, MSE does not implement any hooks and hence it can not be attacked by KHOBE technique," a Matousec spokesperson told Ars. "It might be confusing when you read various media comments on KHOBE research that mention that all antivirus products are vulnerable, but they miss the most important thing, which is that only software that implements hooking can be vulnerable. Only some antivirus products implement hooks but many antivirus products do not use hooks at all. The major group of software that is affected are not antivirus products but HIPS [Host Intrusion Prevention System] software, behavior blockers, various Internet Security Suites with host protection features etc." Update: “Microsoft has worked directly with Matousec to confirm that Microsoft Security Essentials and Forefront Client Security products are not affected by their KHOBE research due to the design of our real-time protection,” a Microsoft spokesperson eventually followed up with.
Microsoft insists that security companies avoid using kernel patches in their software. It would be therefore rather hypocritical of Microsoft to use such hooks. Furthermore, self-defense techniques, which are usually implemented using hooks, are not common part of Microsoft's solutions. It's worth noting that Microsoft listened to security vendors and in Windows Vista and Windows 7 implemented several new documented methods to let products include self-defense mechanisms. Unfortunately, there is nothing forcing vendors to use these new methods as their old hooking-based protection still works in new versions of Windows.
This is why the list of products affected is so lengthy. Matousec is continuing to update the list, and at the time of publishing, there were 35 vulnerable products. This is another big win for MSE, which has received very positive feedback ever since its release.
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Human brains excel at detecting cheaters
Nobody likes a cheater. And now there is evidence that our brains may have a very specific adaptation to identify cheating in social situations.
Humans’ propensity to exchange goods and services is ubiquitous across all cultures, but these social exchanges only function well when the incidence of cheaters is low; therefore, the ability to detect cheaters in this type of exchange is probably under strong selection. An article in PNAS last week suggests that humans' ability to detect violations of social contracts is incredibly accurate, but it's a skill that cannot necessarily be generalized to other logical reasoning situations.
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Reprogramming electronic noses to get a whiff of new smells
It's easy for our noses to distinguish between something that smells so delicious it brings us back to the happy days of childhood in Grandma's warm kitchen and something that smells so nasty that we need to leave the room. But the biology that produces those responses is very complex. Each olfactory receptor expressed in a neuron in a human’s nose can recognize multiple odorants, and many odorants are recognized by more than one receptor, so matching which receptor will respond to which odorant has been daunting. Now, researchers have made progress in teaching electronic noses to make the same sorts of distinctions.
E-noses are analytic devices containing an array of chemical sensors. When these sensors are stimulated by an odorant molecule, they create a response pattern. E-noses have been used in medical, environmental, and industrial applications. Like a dog sniffing out cocaine, they must first be trained with odor samples to generate a reference database of odors to compare new smells against. However, they have proven incapable of dealing with a new odorant that was not present in the initial dataset.
Recently, computer scientists made an e-nose that can predict and mimic how an olfactory receptor will respond to a particular scent. Instead of training the e-nose to recognize a set of scents, they tuned it to the receptive range of an actual olfactory receptor. The e-nose predicted whether twelve odorant receptors from Drosophila would respond to 21 new odorants with roughly 75 percent accuracy.
Although this e-nose can predict which odorant will stimulate a given receptor, it cannot say why—for instance, what molecular features, like size, shape, or charge, it may possess that enable it to interact with its receptor. The authors claim this is an advantage: first, because this method can be used to analyze mixtures of odorants, whereas methods that assess response based on molecular features cannot. Second, looking for molecular features common to odorants that are grouped by an eNose can facilitate the identification of those that are important and help identify new ligands. This method can be expanded to study all ligand-receptor interactions, and isn’t limited to those in olfaction.
PLoS Computational Biology, 2010. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.0040018 (About DOIs).
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More signs point to quantum entanglement in biology
The evidence that evolution has harnessed quantum entanglement, the subject of another recent report, continues to build. Berkeley scientists have modeled the existence of quantum entanglement in a biological structure for the first time. They have shown that, during photosynthesis, these entangled states can exist at high, physiologically relevant temperatures and relatively long timescales.
Classically, one can describe a system by separately considering the energy, momentum, position, or “state” of each of the constituent parts that make up that system. In an entangled quantum system, the state of each part may be related to the state of other parts of the system—they are no longer independent. Quantum entanglement can occur even if the parts are physically separated.
Photosynthesis in green sulphur bacteria is accomplished by a light-harvesting apparatus in three basic steps. First, a chlorosome antenna captures photons. Second, the energy from the captured photon is transferred from the antenna through the Fenna-Matthews-Olson protein (FMO) to the reaction core. Finally, the energy is used by the reaction core to do chemical work.
The FMO is a trimer of proteins, each of which contains seven bacteriochlorophyll-a molecules. In their work, the scientists have shown that that the states of these bacteriochlorophyll-a molecules could be entangled to one another.
Their model has predicted entangled states in the FMO complex at high temperatures—about 300K, which is above room temperature—and shown that the entangled states exist at measurable time scales. The authors note that the FMO complex may be too small to take advantage of the entangled states, but theorize that entangled states in more complex photosynthesis systems may increase the efficiency, regularity, and robustness of photosynthesis. The entangled states can’t be detected at present, but the models have laid out what we should be looking for using new methods that are under development.
Nature Physics, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/nphys1652 (About DOIs).
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Verizon hedging tablet bet with Google partnership
Verizon is partnering with Google to create an iPad competitor, according to the company's CEO. Such a tablet would be part of a strategy to bring Android-based tablets to Verizon's network to compete with the Apple-AT&T partnership on the iPhone and iPad.
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam was discussing future opportunities with Android-based devices, given the company's recent success with the Motorola Droid. "What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are?" McAdam said to The Wall Street Journal. "We're working on tablets together, for example. We're looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience."
McAdam didn't offer any specifics about hardware or a possible launch date, leading some to speculate that his comments were merely FUD aimed at the popular iPad. However, McAdam admitted that Verizon trailed AT&T when it comes to offering its customers a variety of mobile data devices such as the AT&T-exclusive iPad and Amazon's Kindle. As WSJ noted, carriers are keen to begin building consumer support for wireless data devices as the demand for voice services slowly begins to erode.
Verizon is also beginning a transition to a LTE-based 4G network, which should give a significant speed and capacity boost to its current CDMA-based 3G network. McAdam believes popularity of data devices and next-generation networks will bring an end to "unlimited" plans as well as paying for a plan for each device separately. Consumers will likely pay for a "bucket of megabytes," he told WSJ, which would be shared among multiple devices.
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Hurt Locker torrenters: prepare to get sued
Voltage Pictures and the US Copyright Group are teaming up to sue "tens of thousands" of P2P users who downloaded the film The Hurt Locker illegally. A lawyer from the group confirmed the studio's plans to the Hollywood Reporter Wednesday, noting that the scope of this lawsuit is much more far-reaching than the copyright group's past pursuits.
The Hurt Locker, like many other Hollywood films, was leaked onto BitTorrent months before its official release in theaters. It wasn't a particularly high-grossing film—it only made $16 million—but it did end up winning six Oscars. Undoubtedly, the film's early leak online combined with the relatively low earnings is part of the reason Voltage and the US Copyright Group decided to sue. The lawsuit has not yet been filed, but the firm expects it to happen later today.
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LimeWire sliced by RIAA, liable for massive infringement
LimeWire has been tied up in court over copyright infringement claims for years, but LimeWire, CEO Mark Gorton, and the Lime Group are all feeling especially sour today—the recording industry has won a major victory in federal court.
Judge Kimba Wood has just granted summary judgment against LimeWire, agreeing with the labels that the peer-to-peer company was liable for inducing copyright infringement. Turns out that asking LimeWire downloaders to check a box marked "I will not use LimeWire for copyright infringement" before proceeding doesn't count as "meaningful efforts to mitigate infringement."
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Steam for Mac launches with free Portal, 63 games
Mac gamers are in for a treat today, as the Steam client for Intel-based Apple systems has finally been released. We had fun playing with the beta, and now, with the full release, anyone can jump in. Here's the best part: the list of games available is much wider than we had anticipated.
Portal is available as expected, but so is Civilization IV. So are a bunch of Lucasarts adventure games. You can pick a copy of Torchlight, newly on sale for $10. You can buy Braid, or Peggle, or City of Heroes. Right now there are 63 games for sale in the Mac store, and it looks like all of them feature the Steamplay logo, so if you own the PC versions you can download and play the Mac versions for no extra charge.
Just to get you started, you can play Portal for free on your Mac or PC until May 24. The prices for games are all over the place, and of course there are some sales going on (and more coming), but for a launch this is pretty damn exciting. No Left 4 Dead yet, but we'll be patient. If support continues and the game selection continues to grow, this is going to be an easy way for Mac gamers to enjoy their hobby.
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HTC launches its own ITC complaint against Apple
HTC is making good on its promise to fight back against Apple by filing its own patent infringement complaint with the International Trade Commission.
"As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation," North American HTC Corporation vice president Jason Mackenzie said in a statement. "We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones."
Apple sued HTC in early March claiming its smartphones violated 10 of Apple's smartphone-related patents. The company also filed a parallel complaint against HTC with the ITC, citing 10 other operating system-related patents that it claimed HTC's smartphones violated. That last set of OS patents suggested that Apple was targeting Google's Android mobile operating system as much as it was targeting HTC. Those complaints were filed after Apple allegedly warned handset makers earlier this year that it would vigorously defend its iPhone-related IP.
HTC promised to fight back, noting that it also had its own smartphone innovations and related IP portfolio. The company also inked an unspecified IP licensing agreement with Microsoft two weeks ago. The consensus is that the patents covered in the agreement with Microsoft may be related to technology the software giant has claimed exists in Linux-based operating systems, which some analysts believe may shore up its defense against Apple's lawsuits.
Apple is also involved in several lawsuits and ITC complaints over wireless networking and smartphone patents held by mobile handset maker Nokia.
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One database to rule them all, track global temperatures
The focus on the global temperature records that occurred in the aftermath of the theft of an e-mail archive from the UK's Climatic Research Unit revealed how something that seems so simple, like global temperatures, is actually incredibly complex. There are at least three sources of global temperature records, which differ in the data they use, the adjustments made to it, and the analysis that turns it into a single, global temperature figure. Now, in an attempt to bring greater clarity to the situation, the World Meteorological Organization is considering a plan to create a single, publicly accessible database for global temperature data. An editorial in today's issue of Nature describes why a unified database would be a good thing, and discusses the challenges involved in putting one together.
From a big-picture perspective, the data sets aren't in bad shape. Most of the data is publicly available from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, and three independent analyses, from NCDC, NASA, and the CRU, all produce similar trends in the global temperature that end up within 0.06°C of each other.
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Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 launch to businesses
Microsoft today announced the worldwide availability of Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010, and Project 2010 for business customers worldwide (the final build number is 14.0.4760.1000). The release is available today in 14 languages, and the rollout will continue over the course of the next few months, bringing the total number of languages supported to 94. Consumers will still have to wait until June 15 for the retail release.
Microsoft says it focused on four main market trends when developing this year's productivity release: helping mobile employees work with those who are in the office, leveraging social networks without leaking secret company plans, integrating the growing media consumption rates (think including videos in documents), and data overload.
Microsoft's most ambitious goal for Office 2010 is making it available via a familiar experience across the PC, phone, and browser. In addition to the five editions of Office 2010 announced in July 2009, and the ad-supported one announced three months later, Microsoft was also working on Office Mobile 2010 (mobile versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and SharePoint Workspace). Those with Windows Mobile 6.5 based phones that already have an earlier version of Office Mobile can get the 2010 release for free via the Windows Phone Marketplace. The last piece of the puzzle is Office Web Apps, first demonstrated at PDC08: Web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Office 2010 is also the first release of the productivity suite that will come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors and on one DVD no less.
The Office Web Apps hit beta status along with the rest of Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010. That beta is set to expire on October 31, 2010, giving users plenty of time to move to the final version. If you're using any of the previous builds, you'll need to uninstall it before installing the RTM version. For more information, check out any of the links below, or go follow the launch over at the2010event.com.
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Images of another iPhone prototype leaked, now sans screws
Yet another fourth-generation iPhone prototype has surfaced, this time from a Vietnamese businessman who claims to have picked one up for $4,000 during a trip to the US. The images appear to be quite similar to those leaked by Gizmodo last month, but have a few interesting differences.
The photos were originally published to a Vietnamese forum at taoviet.vn, but both the site and a cached version of the site have both disappeared (the images have been reposted at MacRumors). The domain may have simply gone over its bandwidth allotment after being widely linked early this morning, or it may have been shut down at the request of Apple. Given the fact that Gizmodo wasn't asked to remove its posts about the prototype, however, we're leaning towards the former explanation as the most likely reason for the site to be down.
The prototype photos reveal a case nearly identical to the prototype that Gizmodo returned to Apple. The main differences are that it shows a storage capacity of 16GB where the previous one just showed an unspecified "XXGB." The casing also lacks the two screws to secure the case together at the bottom that both the previous prototype and previous iPhone models have had. This detail is similar to an alleged iPhone prototype posted to TwitPic in early February.
This particular iPhone also appears to have some sort of test firmware that runs a diagnostic test called Bonfire. The phone doesn't look like it launches any version of iPhone OS. This prototype was also disassembled, though unlike the Gizmodo dissection, the EMF shields were removed, revealing an Apple-branded processor. It appears to be similar to the A4 processor used in the iPad, though the markings are not the same.
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